It's difficult to be creative when everything you create you find someone already did. The other side is that technology has made people lazy. Leaves no room to be surprised and innovate. There is no place for thought, and contemplation. People just work and stop looking at the little things in life. It's in those little things that great artists saw the beginning of their creation.
I think our creative has no limits. We can always create something new. The fact we have now documentation of our history should not affect our creativity. That's what I think.
Well, I've personally composed songs I thought came entirely from my creativity and after a couple of years I found part of the melody was very much a like a song I already liked. So what we perceive and see does affect our creative life. And we see and hear so much today thanks to the internet that it's hard to create something new! Well, this is entirely my experience as a musician and artist myself.
Oh I see.
In the case with musicians what you say might be common because you could end up storing in your subconscious a melody you like, and then doing something similar believing it was not influenced by something that already existed.
I can imagine that happening a lot.