I suspect I am going to sound like an idiot as well as a dinosaur. Having something tangible, to me, means having something accessible when the music goes out of print or production. I have a respectable, though far from "awesome" collection of LP's. Many of them are barely playable, but they are playable. I love me Dad, but will always curse the day he decided to toss the rather extensive collection of 78's and 45's he and Mom had accumulated. I knew he had trashed something of value, but I, as well as he, underestimated the value. Not int erms of money, but in terms of access. I have a turntable, and it can play any vinyl - even if scratched and damaged. However, the production of vinyl demanded a fairly significant audience.

I had an extensive collection of casette tapes of local or regional old-time, traditional, folk, bluegrass, etc.music. Tapes do not keep like vinyl or like CD's. Many of them are unplayable, or the tape broke, or due to improper storage, etc, are simply gone and inaccessible to me. But that local regional music was never released except on cassette. Some of it released as casettes by the likes of Flying Fish (Critton Hollow Stringband, for example), but was never released as anything other than cassette. Concord may have that music in their archived recordings, but it is not accessible to me, and probably never will be.


Like vinyl, the distribution and marketing of CD's was extensive enough that it is likely CD players will be available long after mainstream distribution of CD's is gone. I'm not convinced the same will be true of MP3's. While there will certainly be a lot of music originally recorded and distributed as MP's available, it is likely that small or very local and regional bands and musicians who record and produce MP3s, but nothing else, will end up being as lost to reasonable access posterity as are the early recordings of folks like Critton Hollow and Trapazoid.

Access is the biggest question.