I know this isn't the focus of the article, but I actually find this really exciting. Not only does it make the preserving of music that much easier, but it also encourages accessibility. Maybe we're at a point where Music Archivists will focus less on recording and more on categorizing, archiving, and studying what other people have recorded. I think that someone like Alan Lomax would have absolutely geeked if he witnessed such a scene. The internet is a great tool for this reason alone. Things like bandcamp, youtube, what have you helps to expose people to new music and help people discover obscure stuff that could easily have been lost to history. In fact, there's a whole youtube channel dedicated to Alan Lomax's work.This was the scene Christopher Kirkley found in 2009. A musicologist, he traveled to Mali hoping to record the haunting desert blues he loved. But every time he asked people to perform a favorite folk song or ballad, they pulled out their cellphones to play it for him; every time he set up his gear to capture a live performance, he says, “five other kids will be holding their cellphones recording the same thing — as an archivist, it kind of takes you down a couple of notches.”
I totally agree with you about Lomax, a whole world of information is available to us all now and it's fantastic. My concern is that there's no thought for the long term. As music gets passed from mp3 to mp3, from youtube to soundcloud, it can only degrade in quality. It's important to preserve the originals rather than rely on third party services which will be gone in twenty years.
I agree. Although, I think we're at a point where most people (or at least the people who care) are savvy enough to know the importance of saving original files/formats. When people are really passionate about something, be it music, books, aquariums, what have you, they take the time to learn how to do things right.
Maybe yeah. What worries me a bit is that, apart from on the internet, I don't see many people who know the difference between lossy and lossless formats (for example). That, and the implication they have going forwards. That said, it's a WHOLE load more people that what we had in Lomax's time, so that's something. Plus, the technology and information to do it 'properly' is cheaply and readily available. In fact, there are whole groups of people devoted to preserving out digital history.