----- Original Message -----
From: <Mwcpc6@xxxxxxx>
Podcasting has increased the amount of audio and video content produced
daily
by at least an order of magnitude. I'm even considering starting my own
podcast. However it would be like adding water to the ocean. Archiving it
all seems
impossible. What fragments of it will survive to form the future's picture
of
us?
First, creating your own podcast at least allows you to decide what
KIND of water you want in your particular corner of the ocean! Assume
that about 99% of the available podcasts are:
1) Current hit tunes (posted illegally, of course)
2) Current radio-station programs (great...IF you like their music
choices...)
3) Promotional podcasts created by bands/artists who can't get airplay but
want to make their material available to the public (which means you can
find out WHY they can't get airplay...?!)
So, what is being done is the archiving and re-archiving of the same
1% or so of (usually popular) music. Worse yet, if you've ever suffered
through a significant amount of current pop music, you can well imagine
the distorted picture the future will have of us! However, since most
interest in "old days" popular music (and classical performances,
since the same pieces seem to make up the vast majority of recorded
material, with only the performers changing) is based on nostalgia...
and nostalgia doesn't and can't outlast the human lifespan...we can
safely assume that most of the future population will be totally
UNinterested in our music (except for a tiny group of musicologists,
discographers [what do we call them once sound recordings are no
longer round objects?!] and oddball folks who actually ENJOY the
music of a long-vanished past!). As well, given current trends,
there exists a possibility that we will only be survived by
radioactive cockroaches and/or extraterrestrial aliens!
In any case, since you live in the good ol' US of A, you can't
put any (well, 99.9% of any) favourite sound recordings onto a
net-available podcast without paying an arm, two legs and your
first-born offspring to RRIA! Oh, you can wait until 2067 (by
which time they will have further lengthened the term of their
copyrights...!)
Steven C. Barr