Preservation Situation

Obviously digital distribution is the only way to go and the days of "hard copies" as product are just about totally dead. With "National Record Store Day" supposed to trigger some kind of nostalgia factor in people to start buying CDs again being a dud, it's painfully obvious at this point. I hated going to record store anyway. As soon as I got a credit card and was able to shop online at places like CDNow, Music BLVD, Amazon, CD Universe, CDBaby, ect. I was done for good buying CDs in stores unless I happened to be in a Circuit City or Best Buy and needed something immediately, which wasn't often.

Then downloads (legal and illegal) came and made my generation (those of us in our mid-20s) the last music buying generation. My nephew, who is 10, looks at his parents CDs like ancient artifacts, even more so than I looked at my parents' vinyl. He can't fathom the idea of getting music in any other way but via MP3 Player or played directly from the computer, I don't think he burns blank discs even. And I'm sure he's hardly alone. If you didn't start getting into music until the 21st century dawned, everything in your possession is digital.

So that got me thinking about something: will preserving music die due to everything being digital now?

Sure, the music industry looks like its on its last legs. But when they go and music distribution become de-centralized where maybe the new "music industry" will just be large web servers where you can rent space to give your fans a place to download without having to worry about server crashes and the headaches of extra bandwidth, ect. Or if bands don't sign a single deal and just put everything out themselves: how will the music be captured for preservation? Hard drives crash, iPods break and get replaced, MP3s get deleted, and I know most people aren't making "back ups". So where will it all go if one or all of those happen, a band splits up and doesn't bother finding a place to host their music because they've moved on. Is it lost forever? Are we going to be regulated to the internet having a music selection no better than the average Wal Mart with 70% of music from the past year and the other 30% the "classics" everybody already owns?

Asside from iTunes, the two most popular ways of getting music online are either from Torrents or file hosting sites like RapidShare, MegaUpload, MediaFire, ZShare, ect. What happens when all of those seeding a Torrent file disappear and file hosting sites delete the RAR or ZIP file under their rules of deleting in 30 days of no downloads? I remember wanting to replace stuff I got from Napster a few years later (due to damaged CD-R's I burned on) and 3 years later the MP3s were nowhere to be found, I had to wait until iTunes to get them again years later. Is this going to happen in the future world of all-digital distribution?

I think digital distribution is the best way to go and will join everybody but record executives dancing for joy in the streets when the last major label racket closes. But as someone whose music collection consists of a good chunk of music that I guess you'd call "lost classics", that were ignored at the time of their release and taken out of print by their record label, the thought of not being able to get that with future bands disturbs me. Like I said, I don't want the internet turning into a Wal Mart music selection with the only difference being they don't censor the language.

I'd like to see some thoughts in the feedback section of your ideas on how to get around this.