Too true, the recording industry has been eating it's own since the beginning. Sure, it gives the opportunity to make a tiny fraction of musicians well-off, but where there used to be a string quartet or a piano in a nice resturaunt there is a stereo. Dance clubs almost universally have a DJ, and you may be able to argue that the DJ is a sort of musician in his own right, he is nothing without the original artists that recorded the songs he will sample or the breaks he will play over. The bars that used to have bands playing on weekends now mostly have Karaoke. It's becoming more and more difficult for young musicians to find places to get the experience that only playing live will give you. Not only that people don't get exposed to good live music as much anymore, which is a shame, because until you have seen a *really* good live performance you really have no concept of what music is really about. It's like thinking you know how good sex is just because you've had a bunch of dates with Rosy.
In general technology keeps improving, but it isn't really improving music, it's making some aspects of a musician's life easier, for instance you can get decent gear that is much lighter now, but most of that gear is trying to replicate the sound of gear that is 40-50 years old. Keyboards have gotten closer to being able to replicate the sound of say a grand piano, or a Hammond organ, or a Fender Rhodes, but once you have been around the real thing, you know that closer is still not very close. Electronic Drums still sound like caricatures of real drums, they are ok for applications where you want that sound, and they are easier to transport and control levels in relation to other instruments in small venues, but I will take a skilled drummer with good dynamics over a set of electric drums any day of the week.
