It’s the time of year for saving money!
I’ve written before about the Library of Congress’ audio archives, but it’s a subject that keeps looming larger in our collective future. To see what the government has for you so far check out this Library of congress site. You’ll find an assortment of recordings from America’s cultural past – early pop, blues, classical and novelty recordings are well represented here.
If you want to see what’s involved in the process of archiving from older media, this page will take you on a tour of the library’s facilities. Sharp-eyed viewers will see several of audiophile products represented, including VPI record cleaning machines.
Want to see what the library has in store in the near future? Check out this article in Encore about plans to partner with Sony to create a “Cloud Music System” that enables users to make their own playlists from the library’s archives. I wonder if Sony has any plans to add some of their own back catalog to the library’s inventory?
And finally, also on our cloudy horizon, Encore has an article about Google’s “Cloud Music Beta” which is about to have a soft rollout to “invitees” to work out the final bugs of their new cloud music service, which promises to deliver up to 20,000 song libraries to end users on their portable music devices, such as Android phones. And, yes, Apple is working on a similar project for iTunes.
And why is so much corporate brain power being devoted to cloud music serviers? Look at the numbers for DVD sales and you see why the majors are all making a wholesale exit from physical media.
The future looks VERY cloudy, but hopefully, in a good way…
