[dapangzi]

That's the trouble isn't it? If we can't even agree on the meaning.

I didn't read it that way specifically because of the use of "you", which to me feels like an invocation of the audience or the royal "you" so to speak, to refer to musicians themselves, rather than the concept of digital streaming and distribution.

"Computers helped you make things louder, cleaner, faster...you still needed a band...or a mate that could actually play something..."

Does the streaming/digital industry no longer have a need for a mate that plays drums? I guess you can read it that way.

Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I read it as almost like a lamenting of the emergence of the "one man band" and cheap throwaway music production by the ease of creating digital recordings at home, and even replacing musicians in the broader music industry with digital replacements, which I also kind of disagree with as being necessarily a negative thing. Toro y Moi, Washed Out, etc., would not be possible without such technology, but the metal music production industry itself has largely replaced drummers with drum machines, not streaming and digital distribution companies.

BTW those of us on the internet earlier were downloading mp3s as soon as 1997 or 1998.