I like Brian Eno's explanation that when you create a work of art and present it to the world, it's sort of not yours anymore. It takes on a life of it's own in a way.

I'm always a little weary of alarmist sounding claims like Gibson's. It sounds cool and thoughtful, and it's definitely a good clear POV for a character to have in a book. I remember reading in Wire some writer saying that, in the near future, the only way we would know the year of a movie would be by looking at the computer setups. Quite a load of crap if you ask me. Writers just love spouting this kind of stuff, but it almost never comes to pass.

Some music is timely and some timeless. But even the timeless stuff has a mark of the period. I don't see how that will change - people are just communicating differently now. And there will always be people who are more into music than others, and those people will always dig and find out more about the artists they love.

I guess I don't understand how exactly music loses its timeliness by being online. And further, how that lessens its impact. I do feel you on the old thing - it's hard to know exactly what it's like to be experiencing music solely sourced from the internet. But personally, I'm down with anything these days that quickens the separation of the men from the boys.