Personally, I think modern music is as good as it's ever been. Sure, if you listen to nothing but mainstream music I can see why you would think that music now is trash but we're not forced to listen to that anymore. No longer are we at the mercy of MTV, VH1, BET, AM/FM Radio. The explosion of social media, Youtube, satellite radio and internet radio stations like Pandora have provided artists the ability to capture audiences with unique and high quality music that would have been incredibly hard to succeed off of through conventional means. There's even message boards like this one where people can talk about artists that don't get much shine.
It can hard to find someone that fits your exact taste given that there's such a large pool, but personally I would take that over not having much of choice when it comes to what I want to listen to.
And honestly, all award shows are BS that just amount to nothing more than circlejerks. Having "awards" for such subjective things as music/tv/movies is just silly and tends to be inconsistent. The only reason to watch award shows is to see the performances and see everyone all dressed up.
