The problem with this article, like so, so many that have recently gone before is that it fails to take into account the typical childhood and early years of an individual who lives in a very small, isolated town. We didn't all grow up in London or Manchester or Bristol, some of us grew up in Lincolnshire. This meant that the exposure to interesting music which may enrich one's life was greatly diminished. The www has changed all that and that is a Very Good Thing. I'm happy for the small town kids who, unlike me, can now easily discover that obscure Czech electronica artist with their computer... now, whether the artist gets paid is another completely separate area.
I was lucky that I knew Nic B and Andrew Sharpley for my last few years of residence in Louth, for they hugely enriched my music taste. For that I'm eternally grateful, but I'll never be that nostalgic about compact cassettes. A system for dictating letters in an office was never really going to do much for the cause of high quality audio, despite the Herculean efforts of Ray Dolby.
