This semester I will be working on a project to determine the size of the hole in our online collection of digitized music from throughout the 20th century. As the digital revolution is a relevantly recent phenomenon, it is understandable that much of the music of the time period in question did not necessarily make the transition to our modern music collection. There is potential for inclusion, and expansion of the current repertoire via the digitization of the personal music collections of our parents and grandparents.
My first task will be to inventory the collection of music that currently does exist, using the Smithsonian Folkways database as my starting point. I will then look into whether there is any kind of internet information site (such as a Wikipedia page) for each artist on Folkways. Then, I will see if the artist's music (and how much of it) is available on popular music stores and streaming sites such as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, Rdio, and 8tracks. Because this would be quite impossible to make any significant progress if I was trying to cover all genres, I plan to spend most of my time looking into the trajectory of the collection of Folk music recordings over the years. Hopefully as I compile more and more information, patterns will develop as to how much of the music has been preserved, and how much of it we are missing. Depending on the size of the hole, I may attempt to come up with a valuation and potential market for this lost era of music.
Some key ideas and takeaways to be had from this project will be the effectiveness of conversion when changing mediums in media, the cost and benefits of current copyright law, and application of research on the Folk music genre to other genres of music (classical, rock, jazz, etc.), and other industries such as print and artwork. With the available storage space on the internet being almost, if not completely infinite, we definitely have the space to hold and keep track of as many different digitized items as we want. The question is, however, do the benefits of attempting to complete these collections warrant the cost of time and effort it would take to accomplish this?
An example of the period and genre of music that I will be doing research on will be similar to that of the recently deceased, American icon, Pete Seeger. I'll attach the New York Times article published following his death because it is both interesting to read of his path through American history and his role in the Folk movement: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html?hp&_r=0.
