Don't know if that answer was a help to you. A lot of what happens to be exciting me about this year's music - female r&b-and-pop-derived group-vocal polyphonic knockabouts and sudden harmonies in an r&b and/or hip-hop rhythmic space (Danity Kane would be my prime example) also shows up in partial form on solo tracks like Rihanna's "Disturbia" (though that's more club than hip-hop), Jordan Pruitt's "I'm Gone," and even a bit in Vanessa Hudgen's "Amazed" - is easier to pull off with current technology than it would have been in the '60s through '80s, but it most certainly would have been doable then through overdubs or tape splices or, you know, backup singers. So it seems aesthetically driven rather than technology-driven.

I guess going back to a basic question, if you asked me what's more important to music in the early '50s, Chuck and Elvis et al. or the invention of the LP, I'd say "Chuck and Elvis et al." in an instant.