I read this in T-pain’s voice. Auto tune does get abused, doesn’t it?
These plugins really exist to save time for large studios, not make bad musicians better. Time is money for studios, so they don't want to waste it on multiple retakes when someone can be close enough to make small fixes with melodyne. For session work, market effects still pressure people to, well, not make mistakes like that. A great singer is still going to be in higher demand than a decent one, because then the studios don't have to spend much time at all fixing their vocals.
Also, -noticeable- autotune can be desired. It's a musical choice. In that sense it's no different than using a vocoder, etc. I personally do not like it but that's the beauty of music; there's something for everyone.
But then the whole production sees similar things all over the place and it gets cleaned right up technically. Time, levels, the works right?
And the energy is diminished, could be lost.
Like fashion, this will all cycle in and out. Young people hear the humanity in music made prior to these and other tools and it appeals.
Little things, like a change in tempo, small vocal errors, inconsistency, all add up in a track.
I bet some time from now, could be as little as a decade, maybe two, we will look back at all this and chuckle.
Like you say, there is nothing technically wrong with any of this tech. And it could all be used very differently from how it is today too.
Recently, I have been going back through great live shows. Fantastic! And I still get that tingle from the realization someone delivered it live, to a crowd. And yeah, not so perfect, but oh so very human too.
Good application of it is not, no. When we hear obvious autotune vocals, it's a deliberate aesthetic choice.
I believe what you're talking about is how modern production is about producing "perfect" song recordings, and mapping everything to a click track/beat grid. Now that is totally noticeable compared to music made a few decades ago. I do agree that it makes music sound sterile. This is separate to autotune/melodyne being used.
"I bet some time from now, could be as little as a decade, maybe two, we will look back at all this and chuckle."
Maybe the main industry studios will, but music in general isn't determined by what those folks are doing. There are more indie publishers than ever, and so on.
And yes! The indies are all over the place. Love it.
Ever since then, it's not bothered me nearly so much when the vocals are tuned. The track hits harder. Yes: it's true the voice loses some of it's natural beauty, but in turn, you get music and voice that follow perfectly.
Now, I really hate hearing it in kids' songs. Sung by kids, for kids, and sounding so flat and blah. Much like laments against modern "beauty" productions, I think excessive autotune presents kids with an unrealistic expectation for their own voices.