Poppagator

I run the whole gamut from unaccompanied singing to full production numbers on voice and a variety of "real" instruments complete with self-made electronic backings. Trust me, it takes as long to get any level of adeptness at MIDI programming as any other instrument or form of composition - if you don't want it to sound robotic you still have to carefully work out which notes to play in to the thing. Therefore, I think your concept of "live" music is a little naive. If it's OK for Herbie Hancock, Martyn Bennett, and Paul Mounsey, then who are we to say it's not real music? The "live" element remains anyway - most people I see working (as opposed to Karaoke-ing) with even mass-produced backing tracks are belting singers and many are fantastic live instrumentalists too - they'd just rather free themselves from the more mundane keyboard parts to play more interesting stuff on other instruments.

I suspect that when you add in the number of kids sitting in their bedrooms practising "scratching", sampling and MIDI, you might find that the number of musicians is sorely underestimated - it could be to do with our categorization of the term "musician". This debate is as old as instruments - each innovation (piano, concertina, electric organ, electronic tuner, etc) is seen as making music too easy - each one proves eventually to give us all different mountains to climb.

Was that a rant? If so, sorry, I just think that we're missing a vital bit of modern folk culture if we ignore the computer as an instrument in itself.