It comforts me immensely to know that there are at least half a dozen parodies of Plain White T's' "Hey There Delilah" on YouTube. So far I've found four making fun of Sarah Palin, one supporting her, and at least one making fun of Barack Obama.

This is one of those cool moments in history when a new technology profoundly affects the musical world (which has been reeling under the impact of one new technology after another ever since Edison invented the phonograph, but this is different.) Actually, I'd trace the current flowering back to introduction of cassette tapes -- the first recording media any idiot, even a musician, could use without a record company's help -- but this is better by an order of magnitude. The development of the printing press strongly influenced Renaissance music, both indirectly by its effect on society and directly by facilitating the publishing and distribution of new music. It wasn't all for good -- a lot of trivial fluff was written and published to be played and enjoyed by amateurs -- but you couldn't fault it for vibrancy.

Fifty years ago purists were moaning about recorded music; they said that by the year 2000 we'd all be mindless consumers of mass-produced pap ground out by the mills of the recording industry. Instead we've got this efflorescence of singer/songwriters distributing their music on the Web. Again, this isn't all for good -- Sturgeon's Law still holds. But technology smothering creativity? Hardly.