Performance poets--especially those who work in different genres and media--will definitely have an edge if we're talking about being one of the top two who are still remembered and appreciated in 2045. That sort of status requires becoming a cultural phenomenon, and modern culture has moved away from the page and into multimedia.
My own preference is still for the page.
I've attended only one poetry reading in my life--enough to realize that it's not my kind of thing. My brain can't deal with the barrage of distracting sights and sounds (and smells, from the cheese and fruit on a table in the back) in addition to the words themselves.
I have the same problem with audio or video links of poets in performance. Even when I don't look at the video (and thus avoid pondering why the end of the poet's collar is standing up in a weird way, and how it must have been folded in the suitcase in order to achieve that effect), I still have to focus so hard on ignoring trivia like vocal fry and glasses clinking that I don't have any energy left recognize clever wordplay, striking images, or even something so basic as rhyme.
Actually, one of the reasons I'm a singer is that I like to be able to see the words.
My daughters constantly mock me for mishearing pop songs. (Although surely I'm not alone in thinking that "no head lice" really is a more attractive quality in one's date than "no headlights," which is the actual Taylor Swift lyric.)
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