Comparable, though very much not equal. Unless you came specifically to listen to music (e.g. many concerts), the music plays a technical role: dance music, movie soundtrack, restaurant / bar background music. For that, a good recording is adequate or even superior.

Yeah, I love going to a bar or nice restaurant and listening to the same recording of Take Five or Kind of Blue, over and over and over and over and over again with zero variation throughout my life. It's amazing.

To some extent it is much better.

More reliable, no divas, no drunk musicians, always on time, the repertoire is literally unlimited.

This reminds me of the guy that told me he didn’t need to travel anywhere because the internet exists and people already write about it and leave pictures. This was in the 90s. Not the same obviously. And I agree that crowds can be super annoying sometimes. And it obviously depends on the context of the type of music created, etc. But in your nicely controlled environment you can miss out on spontaneity or energy that can’t be replaced.

That's a wonderful analogy...

"Strip club visit to onlyfans" is more apt

Nah in small enough venues you sit down and have a beer with the musicians :D