That is correct, but without drugs we'd have a very different musical landscape today.

Yes....i still have no idea how people like heavy metal.... Playing fallout 3 i started listening to old music and they just sound beautiful

What an interesting discussion, this is a point that I have been thinking about for a while. Ever heard ‘Video killed the radio star’, by the Buggles? No doubt that music videos have changed the way the mass appreciate music. Music is an abstract thing, even sung music. Accompanying song with sight helps people relate to the song and sells records.

200 years ago music could only be heard via performance or by playing it yourself. What I think we have lost in this culture is the personal intimacy of music and the community appreciation of music.

Record labels have turned music into a business and that is why pop music is often shallow. More work goes into the image of bands and musicians than the music itself. I think this is because the youth appreciate visuals over sound. I find that a lot contemporary pop is immature, a notch up from the Wiggles.

As for the question: ‘did people appreciate the music in a different way a few hundred years ago as compared to how we allegedly appreciate it now?’

Yes and no. As already mentioned, music in the past was often played with performance. We wouldn’t have Opera or Ballet or dance in general if not. Folk music was played in pubs with people joining in, singing and dancing. If you want to go back as far as ancient Greece and Rome, symposiums hired dancers for entertainment. Performance has always been used to add an additional element to music, including passions of battle, love and sex.

In general we appreciate all art forms differently from the past, art galleries are very new as are novels. Ever since the middle class has become a majority all entertainment has become massed produced.

Also on a side note: The classical music we hear today would sound different from what Beethoven would of played in his day. It's like using a electrical guitar to play traditional flamenco. The instruments and arrangement of classical music is often changed to how it was originally intended.