It's true that the music-consuming public is less sophisticated nowadays--for boring reasons, unfortunately. Before recorded music became dominant, if you wante

It's true that the music-consuming public is less sophisticated nowadays--for boring reasons, unfortunately. Before recorded music became dominant, if you wanted to hear it, you had know to play it (or talk someone else into playing it for you). More people knew how to play music well. Now it's unnecessary to learn to play, and even those people who do play take it less seriously. So the public has largely lost the kind of sophistication you learn from actual performance.