When did music start to suck?

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True story.

When the recorder was invented!

Plato complaining about "when music started to suck" around 400 BC:

"Our music was once divided into its proper forms ... It was not permitted to exchange the melodic styles of these established forms and others. Knowledge and informed judgment penalized disobedience. There were no whistles, unmusical mob-noises, or clapping for applause. The rule was to listen silently and learn; boys, teachers, and the crowd were kept in order by threat of the stick. ... But later, an unmusical anarchy was led by poets who had natural talent, but were ignorant of the laws of music ... Through foolishness they deceived themselves into thinking that there was no right or wrong way in music, that it was to be judged good or bad by the pleasure it gave. By their works and their theories they infected the masses with the presumption to think themselves adequate judges. So our theatres, once silent, grew vocal, and aristocracy of music gave way to a pernicious theatrocracy ... the criterion was not music, but a reputation for promiscuous cleverness and a spirit of law-breaking."

The first instrument was the human voice. Perhaps handclapping was also permitted. Once some other caveman started banging a rock with a stick while simultaneously grunting, music was corrupted forever.

When neo-liberal capitalism's influence began growing and growing and growing...

I think pop music has been on a gradual decline since the 90s ended. Alternative Rock, Ska, Pop Rock, EMO, Grunge, & Boy Bands/Girl singing groups, has been replaced by slower songs with lots of rapping in parts & Techno sounding stuff. In the case of the Techno stuff, I'm one of these extremely rare individuals who actually wants to enjoy music without needing to do meth at a club
That said, Comedy music has become much more prolific online & easier to find thanks to sites like YouTube, Bandcamp, & Kickstarter(most all the music I actually buy these days is comedy music from the latter two types of sites) so that's a major plus

I'd say about 1987 , which is when the rick astley type music came out. Before that there were many great pop songs.
Then around 1991 it was all about dance music with random weird samples.

Technology is so advanced these days, that pretty anyone can make music. Whether it’s a good or a bad thing. Don’t forget that the better the sound gets, over the years, the less efforts many artists put into their work. Auto-tune, samples, etc.

When did music start to suck?

When MTV stopped playing videos.

I'm also guessing that the fact that music has almost been "free" for over 20 years, it might have slowed down some enthusiastic musicians. There's not as much money to be made as there used to. Artists have to be original (and or popular) to get through and gotta sell merch and tour extensively. Not an easy work.