Essentially I want to listen to guitars on 7" vinyl, not synths on mp3. Frankly I'm not too concerned that mainstream rock doesn't exist, there's too many Dylan bootlegs and 30s gospel still to listen to. I'm just disappointed that my generation has to search blogs for good music and not pick it up on single in the non-existent record stores the internet has killed off. In any case, you're probably a generation (or two!) older than me, meaning that you'll never understand me 
(spirit of '76 and all that). In any case, the fact that new bands are focusing on putting their music out on the internet instead of in tangible form saddens me, movements are formed on wax not on 'The Sea of Cowards' as Jack White puts it.
I'll agree with you though that all of The Strokes subsequent albums are fairly poor (as I said, there's only been a handful great of albums -that great artform - made since) and that the NME is utter bollocks (I only purchased it to keep on the Dylan birthday banter). I'm sure there is great music out on the internet, but it's never going to capture the imagination of my generation as it's only going to reach a small proportion of people. Getting a tangible record deal and playing live should still be the priority.
Also, vinyl is on a massive boom. I know far more people who regularly buy vinyl than those who buy CD. Even casual music fans my age (16-18) are buying turntables. Young people want tangible music!
Not all mp3 music is synth based. You can get every kind of rock in that format. And the vinyl resurgence is because of dance music (synth based). That's what your friends are after. (Only two of them like rock, remember.)
The market follows demand and young people obviously want intangible products that are portable. They don't want to do what we did at your age which is tramp around with a heavy box full of warped and scratched records.
To suggest that mainstream rock doesn't exist is deluded. Do you walk around with your eyes closed.
You think it's hard having to search for good music? You're a teenager, what makes you think it was any easier in the past. When I was your age we relied on Top of the Pops, Radio 1 top 40 countdown and the Old Grey Whistle Test to hear music. Yes we could read about it in NME and Sounds, but you couldn't hear it because all those fabled record shops actually only sold what was in the charts. If you can't find what you like on the internet then you're just not trying. It wasn't better in the old days. Foreign bands, that's a laugh. The edge of the world was the beach at Benidorm.
And if you did find the record you wanted by someone who wasn't a chart regular (and you only found out about them because of some freakish stroke of luck that put them at number 5 in the middle of September, and no one on Top of the Pops knew how to dance to it) the single would be 50p, about the price of a gallon of petrol, or an album was a fiver (average weekly wage in 1976 £35 quid a week.)
Movements are not formed on wax because records are not made out of wax. And if Jack White was starting out in the old days he'd probably be a record company 'loss leader' because habitually rock bands were signed as tax write offs and never promoted, only a lucky few got the support necessary. Most were dropped after one album.
The problem you've got is that you're to young to remember what life was really like thirty years ago. It wasn't a glorious playground of sound and light, it was grey, limited, expensive
fucking horrible time to live. And if anyone tells you otherwise, they're lying.
