In the studio the musician does not play to an audience but to a studio microphone. Changing technology creates new aesthetic expectations which in turn generate new artworld conventions. Live music begins to imitate technologically mediated music. Yet technologically mediated music also imitates live music. With music cruising the Internet, on the other hand, the audience can be anywhere, they can even become part of the Music Machine if they can figure out how to pay the entry price.
Music is no longer something made by musicians.
Live musicians are imitating recordings which are imitating live performances. That which is 'live' can be analyzed, reconstituted, and then simulated through a judicious use of the dials. Thus the microphone becomes an extension of the ear, as McLuhan would put it, and the ear itself changes. Hence, a new medium not only shapes our sensory awareness, but that transformed awareness becomes that which observes. The social experience is no longer enough to make up for the lack of technical precision.