'Tis something I have thought about. There was always some form of popular music. Before those damned recordings, sheet music was a popular form of distribution. Good songs sold like hot cakes (or records) . But, yeah, recordings enabled new music to be heard. Music performed by people without a cerebral knowledge of musical theory. It is likely no one would have distributed Lead Belly or Robert Johnson on sheet music. Then there is a pantheon of other folk singers who are gods who would never have been heard from. How about Woody? What of Uncle Dave Macon?

Radio was another from of distribution of music, but would it have been able to sustain interest in a particular song or performance the way recordings can?

I think the pluses outweigh the minuses.

Roger in Baltimore