All I know is, mining works both ways if you put in minimal effort. I'm finding and enjoying (and taping) a LOT of gospel and black gospel material in there (which as most of you know is in my specialty area of study). The databases there make it possible to easily find, hear, and document stuff I have not been able to find (free) anywhere else.

I'm posting the finds in MY area of study as I go, and I would welcome others doing the same. Why? Because-- say someone comes here looking for a song (or artist). We or they Supersearch it and POOF-- up comes the title, posted in a PHC or archived concert songlist. (I just did that with the Fairfield Four's appearance). I put the post in an existing thread about that artist wherever possible. I put the artist name in the subject of the post so it stands out from the search results.   

If we do not already have a lyric or a MIDI, we or they can go to the song and hear the whole thing, not just a short Amazon clip. Some of it is bound to get transcribed to lyric posts.

We can be the song preservationists today-- the "field" recordings just aren;t always out in the sticks, now we have technology and some people (like pHC) are showcasing the treasures. We can take these off archived radio programs, if we take our area of greatest interest and mine away.

The trick seems to be, do we mine just to listen for ourselves, or do we leave a few breadcrumbs so others can find them too? And if we do leave crumbs-- let's make them as easy to spot as possible with the search tools we have here at the feast.

~Susan