Music preservation (or, 'what will happen to all this old music?')

[chriswhotakesphotos]

I recently found an album I very much enjoyed hearing while browsing Youtube. Al Caiola's "Music For Space Squirrels" sits in a unique space between big band music and bluegrass styling. I love big band but don't usually like bluegrass, though there was no point where I wanted it to stop. It's such a fun listen.

 

And yet, when I went to go find myself a copy, it turned up nothing. This reminded me of a troubling problem in music preservation.

 

While we may never get rid of Justin Bieber, each passing day makes old recordings increasingly rare. I feel that this should be especially relevant to the sort who post on this forum, I'm sure we all have at least one album or composition from the first half of the 20th century that we really enjoy. 

 

Physical media deteriorates, rare pressings disappear over time, and old recordings are sometimes never 'pressed' onto newer media, such as CDs or digital files. Other times, it's done wrong. Only four songs of Al Caiola's Music For Space Squirrels are available on digital download services. They're not in FLAC (so they're not archival) and they were poorly recorded at the wrong RPM, so they might as well not exist. That's another problem with music preservation; if it's not done properly, then eventually the only version of once-good recordings might be pointless to listen to.

 

Since we're here, do you rip your old recordings for personal use, particularly physical ones? And should the music business make an effort to make preservation easier in lieu of archaic intellectual copyright rules?

[Chris A]

33 minutes ago, chriswhotakesphotos said:

Since we're here, do you rip your old recordings for personal use, particularly physical ones?

Besides my CDs (of which I've ripped all to FLAC), I done this only for a few of those recordings that I own on phonograph that aren't also on CD.  This is a fairly small number now, but once I finish demastering all my CD tracks ripped to FLAC (ETA perhaps this summer), I'll be going into my old records to extract using a portable digital recorder (24 bit/96 kHz sampling for better quality). 

 

Cleaning up these old records is fairly time consuming to do it well...removing the inevitable pops/ticks (deal breakers for me), but also demastering them to put low bass back in that was mastered out, and to rebalance the highs which (curiously) is often attenuated in the top octave (10-20 kHz). 

 

So the records on which this occurs are ones that cannot be acquired in CD format with good dynamic range still intact.  I figure that it takes 5-10 times the effort and time to do all of this than demastering a CD.  That's a fair amount of effort.  There are some real gems that I have stored up from my younger years that are waiting patiently.

 

33 minutes ago, chriswhotakesphotos said:

And should the music business make an effort to make preservation easier in lieu of archaic intellectual copyright rules?

I find this is a waste of time to worry about in my experience due to the (mis)behavior of the recording industry--mostly through the RIAA.  If you're thinking about trying to sell your recovered tracks then you've got a problem that cannot be resolved--at least not legally in the US.  These issues to me aren't worth the time to worry about.  Recover your old recordings and keep them backed up on more than one hard drive--which are now incredibly cheap.  Gift the recordings to your family and close friends (i.e., no money involved) and you'll be in good shape.

 

Chris

[Chris A]

My father collected RTR recordings for decades that I also plan to transfer to FLAC, de-hiss, and demaster for those tapes that can be played still (many have deteriorated past the point of recovery).  Now that he's passed, it's a legacy that my offspring might like to pass on to their future generations.  I think of it like digitizing old photographs.

[Schu]

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/browse.php

[Mallette]

2 hours ago, chriswhotakesphotos said:

And should the music business make an effort to make preservation easier in lieu of archaic intellectual copyright rules?

Absolutely, they should.  But don't hold your breath.  Even if they aren't making a dime off some of these recordings that remain copyrighted, they won't turn loose.  There are two things I hold true:  The rights people are thugs, and every artist should be paid for their work.  The latter could be accomplished with far less brutality than these people apply. 

Dave