The hardware, everything I mentioned and one or several mics (or a guitar amp), is still only about $3k to get started. SM58s (great for guitar cabs and ok for rock vocals) are used all over the place, they cost $99. An introductory condenser, like an SM81 (acoustic guitar, drum overheads, most acoustic instruments, some vocals), is about $300. If your voice is what you want to showcase, spend $1000 on a Nuemann TLM103 (my college roommate had one of these). $1000 is about the cost of a guitar amp and a guitar to get started.
This equipment will not make you rich, but it will give you access to the tools you need to learn the craft. I'm contrasting to a time (the 60s) when you needed half a million dollars just to put a sound on tape. Putting a sound on 'tape' these days doesn't even cost anything, the technology is everywhere.
Edit: To more specifically address your post, yes you're right, the talent is still the "hard part" of making music. My point was that if you have the talent, recording it is not as expensive as it once was.
Also, a big part of recording is having a producer/engineer, who knows how to capture the essence of a performance in a recording. If you've watched American Idol's last season you could see how high profile musicians and producers zero in on strengths and weaknesses of a performance.
I think one thing the Love piece really pointed out is that there is a lot more to getting your music out there than recording. The distribution system is about to be solved but all the other problems, the really big problems, still exist.