Carson Bailey, LLC considers the continued improvement of audio recording technology and wonders whether it is killing music diversity (A Case for Luddites?).

I've been arguing for a while that the free culture debate has had the unfortunate side-effect of reinforcing a dominant view of music as movable goods and away from music as a performative event. Today, when we talk about music, we mean the stuff on the shelves at Best Buy. It's a post-modern world and recordings are no longer second cousins to the live event but the real deal:

It is strange to blame new technology for reinforcing this paradigm for music, when it is the struggles of the existing purveyors of the paradigm who press it even further. It is particularly odd to blame new technology, when it is these technologies that are on the verge of undermining the old paradigm.

Podcasts, playlists, music sharing are all means by which music becomes more of an experience once again. People will not long accept "shuffle" as the dominant means through which to experience music. They'll demand more from playlists then simply one track after another. The playlist will create the experience. Podcasts will educate the listener, engage them in the "ennobling discipline of learning music". Music will no longer be restricted to the single, perfect recording but we will learn to seek alternate mixes, mashups, live takes that will return music to its diverse and experiential roots.

The luddites are the recording industry. They are the ones who avoid answering the question, "why are we here in the first place?"