David Byrne on what phonograms mean and will mean

Today in David Byrne's journal, a long, amazing meditation on the history of the experience of music, from the birth of the phonogram and the fear that it would end music forever, to the phonogram's death in the face of Internet copying and the fear that music will end forever -- all from the point of view of one of my all-time heros, a giant of music, composition and performance.

Record collectors and consumers often view music as something that is inseparable from the object on which it resides. But if the digital world has taught us anything, it is that the musical information on CDs is anything but inseparable. The two things come apart quite easily, making the value of the delivery object fairly questionable.
So when music as a product, as a consumable object, is subverted and undermined by technology and by its own success, then maybe we have come full circle. Maybe if music is no longer seen as an object, but as pure information, data, sound waves, then the object becomes at best a mere delivery device, and we're back to viewing music as an experience, albeit still one that other people produce.