Many groups that people would consider small wouldn't have a chance without the current tech. Great live shows rely heavily on this tech as well.

The quality of the recording is much better and the studio time required to make these recordings is much less. The benefits of this tech have been staggering.


Though.....


It's true that tech has allowed peoples predilection towards piracy to flourish, and that sucks.

The century old economic model for the recording industries are gone. The genie's out of the bottle. The timbre of today's market has yet to be fully realized.
We're watching behemoths running about the place clutching ancient parchments to their chest clamouring for our attention. For our understanding. Their histrionics are nothing more than a global temper tantrum. They're justifying unscrupulous behavior like two three year olds fighting over a toy. They're trying to convince everyone that the world should not change and embrace the new reality. They want us to continue to embrace their compartmentalized capitalism.

The irony is that the Internet was originally designed so to allow information to be freely transmitted among all of it's users. That Utopian ideal is being fully realized in ways that few foresaw.
However, in the long-term this is a good thing. The business models that rely upon compartmentalizing intellectual property have to conform to the new reality, or they will die due to economic extinction.