>I add that IMO current bands and groups produce far less songs per year than the last generation's artists. It seems that every other album today includes remixes, remakes, and live performances of the band's older hits rather than complete (and risky) new songs.<

The same is at least equally true of classical music albums, and of classical and modern live music, yet in these cases no-one objects.
Perhaps we should distinguish the performer from the composer a little better. A piece can be a new piece or an existing piece differently (creatively and originally?) interpreted. So the sampling william is talking about (Bingley, I'm william's age and it was news to me too!), is actually interpreting rather than creating.