I'm confused. Is music not being treated as art today? How will making it unavailable to the public change anything?

They mean art in the sense of "high art"[0]

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_culture#High_art

This was a tough one to condense into a short title. The point about it being treated as art was more referring to the fact that it would be toured around like exhibit rather than the album itself being art. I agree, all music should be treated as art, but not all music is.

Albums themselves, the physical things, rarely are.

The physical thing isn't the music. It's just a vehicle. A package.

It's not the music, but it's the experience. It's something that's been lost in recent times, for the most part.

I have a large collection (circa 3,000 lps). For me, listening was seldom just about the music. The packging can set the scene. Take a Lemon Jelly lp - it folds out into 6 sides of beautiful hand craft art, before you get to the music.

Yes. But this physical thing, of which there is only one, or the act of releasing this physical thing, is the "artwork" in question, beyond the music.

So it's a really artistic, $5,000,000 album cover? Or a public performance piece?