It's been that way for twenty five years now, at least. I mean, it was aesthetically permissible for Pink Floyd to play some tape of their foley, but the extreme of using a tape is 'karaoke' ... As performing artists we face balancing the difficulty of keeping a band together versus, taking away the time consuming and sometimes difficult interpersonal work while still wanting to have a more engaging live show than just 'someone playing along with a machine' ... I imaging the challenge now is to not be tied to the machine, but to have the machine enhance live improvisation, making each show a unique spectacle, not a mechanistic process ...