the development of recording technology and its influence on the way people sing would make a study on its own.

I can remember the late Barrie Roberts telling me about how sometime in the 1960's , Folkways came up with a few quid and gave it to someone who should have known better to record folkmusic of the Irish community in Birmingham.

Recording was such privilege in those days that local folkies were queuing to actually be on a real record. Barrie , who had quite a avuncular plummy English accent did Follow me down to Carlow, and Harvey Andrews learned The Patriot Game.

Nowadays as a moderately unsuccessful musician, I've got a couple of 24 track recording machines in my back room, and the recording machine is (as Jim was saying) the norm. You can store a lifetimes music on a single SD card, as recently as the 1980's for the same quality, you would need thousands of pounds worth of ampex tape, slicing tape, splicing block etc.