A scarier trend that isn’t getting as much attention is people not making it to Slichos altogether. I’ve now seen multiple places not be able to get a minyan together for slichos. My slate is not totally clean in this regard so I don’t want to sound too much like I’m getting up on a soap box and yelling at the masses. It’s just a scary thought that decades from now selichos could be one of those things like tikkun chatzos that people “used to be careful to say.”
I’m sure the musical slichos folks think they’re preventing this from happening, which is nonsense. The reality is, if a person can wake up at 6 AM for musical slichos, they’re just as able to wake up for traditional slichos. If they chose not to, that’s just their own bad middah.