I share your feelings for Linda Ronstadt. Who wouldn't? As usually happens when somebody brings up a musical artist or band, I just spent some happy time on YouTube listening. The 1977 performance is playing as I write. Thanks!

Your musings on our good fortune to have electronic recordings touch on something I've long thought is profound: The human longing for immortality expressed by externalizing our memories, starting with those crude drawings on the cave walls. For the longest time, up until the 19th century, only the works of painters and sculptors could be preserved fully-realized. Other artists, such as composers, as you point out, could only record instructions on how to recreate their art, but never their own performances of it; never how it made them feel.

But that began to change in the 19th century, first with the invention of photography, then sound recording. The dimension of time was added to photography in the early 20th to capture motion. But to my mind we crossed the most significant threshold with the conceptualization of information theory, and thus digital recording of information, by Claude Shannon mid-century. Humanity gained eidetic memory, available to the masses, easily copied and backed-up and preserved. Forget AI, "AM" may be the singularity. We needn't forget anything, ever again. I almost added "except in the event of the collapse of civilization", but even then, one individual carrying a USB stick in a backpack could preserve the best of what we were.

Like the music of Linda Ronstadt. She's immortal now, the bits be praised.