Re: [ARSCLIST] Libraries disposing of records

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> You needn't worry one bit about the boy bands being preserved. Anything that
makes that much money
> for a record company gets preserved 10 ways to Sunday and gets rehashed
anytime a marketing whiz
> senses the least public desire for it.
>
> Heck, look at Rhino. They made their bones collecting in one place 60's
semi-obscure one-hit bands
> ("Nuggets") and every junky funky tune ever to grace boomboxes and car radios
in the 70's ("Have A
> Nice Day") and any doo-wop song they could dig up. And later on, they did the
80's and of course the
> excellent "No Thanks! The 70's Punk Revolution" box set. As you know, once
this stuff gets reissued,
> the copyright gets renewed for the new medium, so therefore it has monetary
value and is preserved.
>
> But this feeds into my point about diving every dumpster full of 78's. The
"good" stuff (ie stuff
> with any hope of monetary value) DOES get preserved and then it gets reissued
in a better medium as
> technology marches on. And every time it gets reissued, its chances of
preservation increase.
> Perhaps the luddites who insist only on the "originals" -- which were just bad
copies (bad due to
> limited technology) of the master disks -- would like to go without indoor
plumbing or regular
> bathing, so you can "relive" those glorious 20's. Hey, maybe those shares of
the buggy-whip factory
> aren't really worthless!
>
The danger here is the assumption that "MONETARY vale" equals "value!"
First, the monetary value of a sound recording is, in virtually all
cases, a nostalgia-driven and thus transient value. Recordings of
the late fifties into the early seventies are valuable...and thus
saleable...because there is a large and well-heeled demographic
of "baby boomers" who are trying to reverse time and re-experience
their youth (see under "Rising Viagra Sales" to use a bad pun...!)
and have no qualms about paying for that privilege! This does NOT
make all these artifacts of baby-boomer-younger-days inherently
superior to all other previous sound recordings...but it does make
them more reliable sources of profit! Nothing more, nothing less...

As far as "reliving outdoor plumbing"...here, the difference is that
we KNOW that indoor plumbing serves the same exact function as its
outdoor equivalent, only better. However, an "improved" version of
an old analog sound recording may...or may not...represent a "better"
version. It may come to pass that we have the necessary computing
power, and algorithm(s), to digitally analyze an analog sound
recording from a given period, and recreate the actual sound for
which a recording attempt was once made...! But...not YET!

Steven C. Barr