For example, 90's underground Texas rappers like Z Ro and K Rino have their early music reserved for today courtesy of physical music formats like records, tapes and CD's. Physical copies created whats called "collectors." But how will this era of digital music be preserved for the future when you have hundreds of current underground Texas rappers making digital music? Will there be whats called "digital collectors?"... Will someone really keep a USB of all this underground oversaturation?? We are in an era where music listeners download music and put songs they dont really care about in the recycling bin when they need space on their computers not to mention music lost from computers and phones due to reboots and phone damage. With records, tapes and CD's you could preserve physically to the point that people till this day still have records that were underground from the 40's 50's and 60's But can an underground rapper/artist in 2016 be preserved for 50 years digitally?? I'm sure an artist on a major distributor wont have such problems because they have masters but I dont know how these current underground artists will be preserved for the future.
I remember the demise of Napster and Limewire and I noticed again we are caught up in this idea that sites like Youtube or Datpiff will be around forever but if Datpiff and Youtube shut down tommorow, so many unknowns material will disappear along with their build up of momentum to the point they would have to start all over again. I say that because I have come across so much quality music via Youtube and Soundcloud yet let a few months or years go by and I go look for the artists music and their account has been deleted or songs removed to the point I would actually go looking for the artist asking them were did their music go? I currently have a bunch of music from unknown artists that I ripped from Youtube and Soundlcoud that dont even exist on those sites anymore. I liked the music so much that I wanted to keep it but its like once they were deleted, their souls were removed as well and I'm the only person who remembers they ever existed.
I remember the demise of Napster and Limewire and I noticed again we are caught up in this idea that sites like Youtube or Datpiff will be around forever but if Datpiff and Youtube shut down tommorow, so many unknowns material will disappear along with their build up of momentum to the point they would have to start all over again. I say that because I have come across so much quality music via Youtube and Soundcloud yet let a few months or years go by and I go look for the artists music and their account has been deleted or songs removed to the point I would actually go looking for the artist asking them were did their music go? I currently have a bunch of music from unknown artists that I ripped from Youtube and Soundlcoud that dont even exist on those sites anymore. I liked the music so much that I wanted to keep it but its like once they were deleted, their souls were removed as well and I'm the only person who remembers they ever existed.