> Watching live piano performances has always been niche.

Having live piano performance at a bar or other venue was extraordinarily common. There's still piano bars, but...

No it wasn't. Time was almost every British pub had a piano and that's where your musical entertainment came from. All music was live because what other choice was there? The particular form varied by culture of course: mine was more ceilidh oriented.

I dunno, I feel like there's something qualitatively different between pub music used to liven the atmosphere of a venue, where the primary activity is socializing with your friends and consuming alcohol; and art, which is what we're talking about. That is, just because a piano is used to create art, doesn't mean that everything that comes out of a piano is art. I think that applies to Midjourney as well.

But electronic computer music (including pianos) allows us to enjoy many more genres of music nowadays than it was some while ago when only "the elevated" afforded to go to a piano concert.