Not if you can read it.

No...yet I do think that there's a huge amount of snob-iness about the whole idea that non-performing musician are somehow less valuable to the music world. IE someone who can play great shred guitar, violin, or sing from sheet music is usually considered fantastic while someone who wrote the music but can not play is often ignored. Easy example: Madonna vs. William Orbit.

In my opinion, there are far too many cases where the only place people hear about who wrote the song IS the sheet music (which is often restricted to a limited audience who can read it).
Why not have a section that says "song writer for X tracks is..." in as big font as the guitarist, drummer...'s names on albums? Also, why not have sheet music available in the form of one-instrument-only sound files that can be slowed down and include videos of how to play that part on its intended instrument? It's quite one thing to learn to read notes and quite another to see, hear, and feel the actual artist playing the song when learning to play it (that's what makes good cover bands better than bad ones IMVHO).

Sheet music has and will always be useful. But I feel the format and the ways of giving songwriters credit both need to be greatly extended beyond just sheet music and tiny subscript on albums.

It is very usefull for some people now and will be forever, so the answer is no.

as long as there is music to be performed by musicians, it will be written down somehow. The musical staff system in its modern form does have some limitations with regard to modern instruments and performance practices, but the system is itself an outgrowth of previous systems that had the same problems, though they were created in response to the previous system having similar problems, etc. etc. etc. So the whole concept is in more or less constant evolution with a few slow periods here and there :)

Personnaly I nerver use it...because I don't know and compose and play by ear and just know the name for the basic minor and major chords on guitar and piano, but I can image that for people who are lost without rules in Music it could be still necessery.

without a doubt there are types of music that would be difficult or impossible to describe with classical sheet music now like turntable scratching, ambient, dnb, industrial, trance, noise based music and whatever the hell you call what the blue man group does but otherwise doh

I think if it wears all the designer labels and adds a few layers of makeup it could hold its own..

Yarp and Narp!

No, but it's not the ultimate guide to music either. It gives a nice overview on the structure of a piece, but the true power of music can only be produced by the musician.

Why are we picking on paper? Are paper plates and paper hats next? When does the hating stop?!

No. Like clones said, a recording doesn't necessarily carry all of the information. And look at how much performance variety can be obtained from sheet music.

No - recordings do not carry the performance information - only the result - and without directions the result may be difficult or impossible to recreate. Of course.... if you are willing to eliminate reproduction and/or performance by entities other than the originator you can happily toss out the paper... but I don't think you will.