Aspiration and Inspiration

Music (and so do other arts, and even scientific, philosophical and moral ideas) evolves by imitation, transformation, fusion or opposition. Every artist ever has referenced music before his time, and some lucky ones have inspired those artists that have come after them. Either by trying to make something similar -but at the same time, unique, as in the whole music making process is completely subjective and individual, so there's always this 'thing', something difficult to put on words that every artist infuses to their music- than what's already been done (that's how genres are made), or by merging or fusing previous ideas (blues-rock is a fusion of blues and rock, folk-rock is the fusion of folk music and rock, etc. Even prog is the product of fusing diferent genres and musical ideas, from jazz, classical, folk, pyschedelic rock and even avant-garde, electronic or latin genres sometimes), or by transforming something that already exists and pushing its boundaries (psychedelic rock and blues rock led the way to hard rock and heavy metal, and so on), or by opposition to what's being done that at the right moment (either leadin to revivals or 'new' styles that oppose in its central ideas to what's being done, being punk a great example of that, a 'simplistic' style with short songs that was in opposition to prog's complexity and song length).

In the end musical ideas, though seemingly infinite, most of them have some common ground that is inescapable. There's only a limited amount of notes and chords and scales you can use to compose, and that's it. Do what you can.