[image error]    At first, all music was folk music.  Then it gradually became something people got paid to do, something performed by highly skilled trained professionals.  This created market forces, which led to wealthy people controlling the most expensive musical formats, namely, what we now call classical.  Music became a signifier of power.
    So music became undemocratized.  But some cool stuff came out of that, like Mozart.  But then music started getting democratized again; for instance, the invention of the upright piano eventually allowed millions of Americans to have a piano in their home, and they played popular songs of the day by reading off something called "sheet music."
    Guitars are, famously, easy to learn and hard to master, but the former quality was the important part for us impulsive humans.  So when electric guitars started getting mass-produced, boy, that was really something: in terms of volume and real estate on the frequency spectrum, an electric guitar could compete with an entire horn section and maybe a piano too. Especially if it was played through a fuzzbox or a wah-wah pedal.  Throw in amplified bass that made a low-end, innard-massaging throb previously only experienced in church or in a thunderstorm, and drums with plastic heads that were loud as hell and would take an indefinite beating, and you've got yourself a populist revolution.
    A little later, recording technology became revolutionized ��� because it got a lot cheaper.  So instead of a bunch of guys in white lab coats beavering away at racks of electronics in expensive, exclusive studios owned by major labels that were part of sprawling manufacturing conglomerates, you had one hippie-turned-punk with his own eight-track board and a few half-decent mikes who would charge you only twenty bucks an hour ��� it didn't necessarily sound very good, but hey, you got a record out of it.
    Synthesizers and drum machines got cheaper and cheaper until they were virtually toys, and you could pretty easily extract halfway credible music out of them.  And there was also two turntables and a microphone.
    Then samplers and sequencers arrived, and you didn't even need to be able to play an instrument at all, or need a traditional studio, to make music that could potentially be rump-shaked in discos all over the world.  Soon after that, you could make an entire album on your laptop using free software.
    And now?  Now all you need is a good AI prompt.  "Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys sing Kraftwerk's greatest hits."  "Charles Mingus jamming with Robert Quine and Jaki Liebezeit, all of them mildly stoned."  "A De La Soul album completely composed of samples from Fantasia." "Manilow sings Dylan."  You know, the kinds of things you've only dreamed of hearing.
    So it's back to the people again.