Based on a story from an interview I did with Wired Magazine author ERIC STEUER.
Original Podcast:
In many ways, this article is about losing the things that we spend our lives struggling to create. Why do I care so much that the art and music I create live on after me? I don't really know, but I do know, whatever I create in digital media has a much less chance of surviving even my own lifetime. I know this by a case study of the last 25 years. - enjoy the article. Follow me 
Records In The Attic - A Case For Physical Music Media?
*by @Ezravancil
My first EP was recorded at the age of 15 at a friends house. He had purchased the latest four-track Tascam tape machine and with a few SM57's, we made my first album in his bedroom/studio.
I've since written and recorded songs into the thousands and of those multitracked, at least 300-400 songs. Of those, I've released somewhere around 12-15 albums/EPs. I have to generalize the numbers because I started some 25 years ago, I consumed a lot of mind-altering substances for a good part of those years, so, it's all a little hazy now. I start with my productivity stats, not to brag, but to make a point.
The point being, that out of these many thousands of recordings I've created, no more than a quarter remain on the earth. Not even all of the released albums remain.
I embraced digital recording and storage early on. Much earlier than many of my peers. What remains are mostly the songs I recorded onto tape or were released on CD. In fact, I've only lost a few of the masters to those projects, but, of the many terabytes of digital musical dreams I created–with good level playing field of a half digital recording and half analog–I think I now have a good amount of personal 'statistical' data to show that DIGITAL media is not a good idea for longevity.
Digital Abyss: Why Physical Media Matters TO Me - A Case History
I hope to use this case study of my own musical life to dig into this ethereal abyss of digital longevity. Some of the thoughts on this topic go even further back to my own parent's album, recorded and released in 1978.
As sort of a disclaimer, I have to admit, I'm no expert on technical things, at least I don't think of myself that way. I don't sit around and regularly consume Hypebot articles articles on the latest music trends; I don't look at gear porn or lust over the latest technology. These days though, most musicians become technical experts just by desperation. I'm one of those.
Crazy on a Ship Of Fools
My case is simple. We don't know what the F&*$k we're doing. Even the Google Vice President, Vint Cerf, warns of the 'forgotten century.'
We tend to see our generations as smarter, more educated and intelligent than the generations before. But think, just 30-40 years ago NASA somehow erased ALL of the Apollo 11 tapes. Reuters says around 200,000 tapes.
Even if 'evolution' is making us stronger and smarter and not turning us back into monkeys, It doesn't happen this fast. We're still as much a 'knucklehead' now, as the archivist at the NASA in the 80's.
FUTURE HEADLINE: "CEO of AMAZON admits they erased 2015 to make 2055."
We don't know if we will be able to access an OGG, FLAC, Mp4 file or a flash hard drive in 20, 30, 80 years. Or in the least, we don't know that we won't need to spend thousands on an archeological team to access them. In just a decade, I have proofs of the great digital apocalypses to come. Being a non-techno geek, I'll stick with mostly personal stories.
Records In The Attic
I was the podcast host for the Kompoz Musicians Podcast a few years back, and one of the more interesting interviews I was in on, was with the Wired Magazine Auther ERIC STEUER. You can listen to the on Dtube:
▶️ Watch on DTube
▶️ Watch Source (IPFS)
While talking with him about Creative Commons Licensing, I told him a story about my parent's (Who were working musicians in the 70s and 80s) unreleased tapes I found in the attic. I was relating it in a positive way to how the digital age and especially Creative Commons has helped us artist set free those works that would inevitably be lost in the attic. I still believe Creative Commons is a great thing.
The Podcast does not really stay too long on this topic. I included the interview more so because it spawned the idea for this article.
Listening to the interview today, I was thinking more of my parents 'released' vinyl record. Strangely enough, not only do I have only one tape of their unreleased album, I also have only a few copies of their released album. This made me think about how music survives.
Can 5000 Records Last 4 Decades?
My parents were in a touring Gospel Band back in the 70's and 80s. They released only one record. Of course, their album is quiet dated, but the sheer scope of that album, with a full orchestra, string arranger and the now famous Lloyd Maines cutting it up on guitar, is something I can only dream of making in this day and age.
All of us siblings are musically inclined, and a few us, me included, are working/performing musicians. So, you can imagine, the album that started it all is pretty damn special to us all.
One of my earliest memories is of a Show & Tell in (I think) the second or third grade. All the kids lined up with their Barbie Dolls and Swiss Army Knives (Yes we carried knives in school back then). I got in line with a brand new record 'autographed' record. I had asked my parents to sign it.
I went to the front of the class and showed and told the kids about my parent's record. I shared a few stories of being in the studio and what that was like. My favorite part was the sugar cubes in the break room.
Then, the teacher played the record–I felt like THE rock star. The kids were stunned. It was a big deal back then. If you even had a record, you might as well be a famous star. I gave the record as a gift to the teacher and she played the record a few times over the semester.
Dream Away Time - An Record's Survival Story
“Four days will quickly steep themselves in nights; Four nights will quickly dream away the time.” - ― William Shakespeare
I'm not sure how many boxes of records they had been given by the record label or how many were sold in the 70s. What I do remember is that there were always boxes of these records, and 8 track tapes, here and there.
When people would come to visit, it was pretty common for them to leave carrying a few records. Though my parents no longer toured in the mid 80's they still played, and they would sell some records here and there. Most of those remaining boxes of records though, I think, we're just given away over dinners, over decades. When me and siblings left, I think each of us had at least a box or two in our garage.
I had my own life to live though, my own music to lose. But, as the only one that continued as a working music artist, I did care about preserving my parent's album, probably more than the rest of the family. Still, their record drifted to the back of my memories most years.
Every once in awhile I would get sentimental and worry that my grandchildren would not have my parent's album, so I would check around and locate some copies. Make some digital copies (..lost). Soon though they were harder and harder to find.
Somewhere in the mid-2000's, I was asked for a vinyl copy of my album for review by a much-read blog. Vinyl? What? I thought vinyl was a dinosaur, why would they want my album on vinyl? Of course, I had no reason to press vinyl (then).
This got me thinking though. I thought it would be funny to send my CD in my parent's record sleeve for some reason. To my surprise. I could not find my parents records. I looked in the attic, I looked in my brother's attic, I looked at my parent's house. Where did all these boxes go? I finally found one copy. And since, my family has found a few remaining copies of the record.
Somehow, over the years, we had given them all away; or lost them as we each moved from house to house.
This greatly disturbed me. What if I lose these final records and 8 tracks? What if my own grandchildren don't have a chance to listen to this legacy of our family?
I set out to acquire the original 24 track masters but had no luck. There was apparently a dispute from long ago with the record company. I found out my father had been trying to get the masters for decades, then my brother tried, and finally, I tried, with no luck. But I did find out that there was a warehouse where they are stored. So at least they STILL exist.
Though, since then, we have found a good amount of those records and 8 tracks. I find it interesting that It took thirty years to lose, slowly, one-by-one, around 2000/3000 records. Seems like an anomaly, a strange occurrence, but as I grow older and experience this wild ride of aging in life, I actually find it quite amazing that we still have copies at all.
Though my digital song's longevity seemed assured in the early days; In reality, I have lost many times more songs and releases than my parents. Gone... into the vapor we call the internet.
Losing Promise Land - 50 Ways to Lose A Song.
The fate of one of my most popular albums has almost met the same as my parent's albums. I was aware of my parents Dilma of record stock at the time I printed 'Promise Land,' to CD which was around 2006. It was recorded digital, the second full studio album I had recorded in this new digital realm.
I had even expressed to my band the worries of my parent's album disappearing, so I encouraged us to order much more than we thought we'd sell.
I spent way too much on the thousands of CD's we bought. It was in the beginning digital download era. What made it hurt all the worse was that the album completely flopped. On its release date, it became my worst selling album ever!
Over the following years, I carried a ton of boxes around, the weight of 'Promise Land CDs' further deepening the wounds of its failure to sell. But then, years later, one of the songs from the album landed on a popular TV show in the UK called Skins.
Suddenly there was a resurgence of listeners to the album on the internet. Teen girls writing love letters, 'Oh Ezra, 'Take me with you. [the title of the song]' I had since moved on and was working on other music projects. I had almost forgotten about the many boxes of Promise Land CDs in my attic.
I started selling the CD's at shows again. As it stands now, there is a small remaining pile of them. I've since banned myself from selling any more of the original printed CD.
Every once in awhile I need to rip one because I can't find any high-quality WAVs on my hard drives. When I see that diminishing pile in the attic, it beckons me back to that small pile of my parent's album.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
But what's the worry. you say? Why don't I just rip it and go print more? It's all over the internet anyway, on hard drives, it's safe, right? Well maybe. But let me share a little more loss.
A History Of Loosing Sh*t
My problem has been much worse than keeping a few albums from decay.
I was already very prolific as a songwriter as a teenager. My numbers of, 'how many songs I've written,' are generalized, because, I really don't know. I base what I think I've written on a count I did in my early 20's that was already reaching a thousand songs. I'm now in my 40's and have not slowed down. For someone who cares about his work's legacy, this creates one hell of a headache.
In my teens, I would record on cassette tapes. I wrote every single day and not having much money of my own, I was always desperate for blank tapes. I resorted to recording over every tape I could find. Including my parent's album collections, and sadly, to my bitter dismay, I also recorded over many of my parents own studio tapes and writers tapes... regularly. Cassette tapes had protective tabs to protect from accidentally recording over them, you just punched out the tab. Consumer tapes came with no tabs. This was easily solved by placing tape over the tabs.
Every once in awhile, my dad would be looking for a tape that he had some song he had worked on, only to find – 'check one two three' – ... his son's voice with my new hit song cutting in halfway through HIS tape. I think they were so happy that I was writing so much that they rarely blew their tops... though they did a few times.
My writer's tapes continued all the way into my late 20's. But, even then I had started to do some of the 'writers tapes,' on my iMac G3.
My tape system worked okay as long as all I was trying to keep was the current rash of tapes. I continued in the bad practice of recording over older tapes when I had a desperate melody in my head. There is even one song on the album I spoke of above, that was recorded on my answering machine microtape because I couldn't find a tape to record Suicidal Teeth on. And at that moment, it was the most important thing in the world that I get that song on tape! As were all the songs.
Suicidal Teeth Recorded To Answering Machine Music Video
I recently put together an anthology of my teenage acoustic funk band Gypsy Tree. As a good example of the longevity of TAPE, I still have the original 24 track 2-inch tape of some of these recordings. They're old, but all you have to do to bring them back to life is bake them in a certain way. Though, much of the recordings we had were only on Cassette tape.
I pulled my huge box of cassette tapes out of the attic to start searching for lost Gypsy Tree songs. Sadly, I found that the bottom had water damage and that many of the tapes had unraveled. Through the help of fans, I was able to get a good collection of our recordings together from dispersed tapes.
One fan even helped fix broken and unraveled tapes. But, the truth of just how many songs I had lost really sunk in.
I sat with the cassettes and listened over a few days. Most of them, I could tell, had been recorded over many times. For every 90 minute tape recorded over was a loss of another 5-10 songs. Yet, a couple hundred of my early recordings survived! Not so true with my digital years.
Losing Love For Digital
If my analog losses were bunker hill, my digital age of loss, was Hiroshima.
Not only had I faced the very natural loss of boxes of tapes and overdubbed tapes, but in my late 20's I switched completely to digital recordings of my 'writing files' and of finished multitrack music. In the excitement of all this digital bliss, I had the bright idea at the time to transfer my tapes to digital, since it just seemed much more secure than these boxes of tapes my wife kept throwing away.
'Disc rot' is a phrase describing the tendency of CD or DVD or other optical discs to become unreadable due to physical or chemical deterioration.
Slowly as I moved into the digital realm, I lost sight of the tapes; let more and more of them get lost or recorded over. I was set. I had a portable hard drive, that probably only had only 100 gigs of space... If that.
As the songs and albums and projects kept coming over the years, It got difficult to pay for all the hard drives I needed. I sometimes burned DVDs. Almost All of those DVDs I burned have corroded and no longer are accessible.
When I got into video. Things got out of control. I didn't have the money to buy, at that time a $400-$1000 hard drives, every time I filled one up. It began to be an endless cycle of moving and deleting files to make more room for the new songs.
As the hard drives piled up, it became a losing battle to keep all the NEW creations and the old creations. I had to make hard decisions. I'd dump a bunch of fledgling songs on to 10 DVD's (the ones that don't work now) and clear the hard drives for the next round of songs and videos.
On top of that, I was recording full studio albums to digital now. So there were multiple versions of multiple sessions. I am a huge re-take guy. So there might be 20-30 takes of one song in multi-track WAV files. ADAT tapes started piling up also.
I couldn't afford Pro Tools, so I would download cheap or freeware multi-track software; software(s) that now no longer exist, with strange file formats and structures that I can neither open or figure out how to assemble.
By (around) 2008 I was drowning in gigabytes. I started having hard drive failures. Tech Geeks advised me to buy some newfangled storage device, but they didn't understand – I had no money and a need to keep producing new files.
There were no affordable or dependable terabyte drives at that time. Because I was also a graphic designer and had also moved into video production, It was pretty normal to need a new hard drive every month.
Someone suggested a RAID solution to my ever growing storage problems. So, I got something called a DROBO system for back up. Here came the first Hiroshima.
On this DROBO system, I was for the first time, able to back up 2 terabytes (I think) of DATA. Which for a guy buying 120-200 gig hard drives meant I could drop some weight. I got the DROBO, set it up and moved my most important music file archive onto the system. It had all the converted tapes, and hundreds of new songs, videos, and multitrack sessions. I felt safe at last!
When I got enough money, I would buy another and run a RAID, so that if one goes down, I have the mirror.
I could buy replacement hard drives and have mirrors of them all. Oh, the blessed wonder of technology.
Sadly, I never got enough money. And could never find the time to understand the finer details of setting up a RAID.
I went back to buying hard drives but kept the archives on my DROBO device. Then, on one fateful day.. something happened to my DROBO. I don't know what. I could no longer access my files. Long story short, I tried everything, and ended up forever losing that DATA... Or should say, losing years of my creative life.
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” ― Jalaluddin Rumi
Other Fun Stories of Great digital Loss
Okay, so I'm an unorganized doofus and have lost terabytes upon terabytes of corrupted hard drive archives. Not very 'Pro' of me right? But what about all the digital albums I made in PRO studios. Surely they weren't so wild and willy with my recorded music?
Not so. A few years back I had an opportunity to use an older (2003) album in some Film work. But, I needed to access the multitracks. It was recorded at a studio. So I called and said 'Hey, you still got that album... I lost the sessions in a hard drive fail' (and I did) He said he did. He kept everything of course. But.. well.
At the time of the making of the album (2003) he was using some newfangled proprietary storage device that was supposed to last forever, but now, he could not access the files.
We researched and finally found a clever individual who had created some way of accessing and transferring this DATA, but the equipment needed would cost me around $1000-2000 bucks. Which I had no way of getting.
Digital Promotes Productive Laziness
I had gotten lazy and loose in the digital era. I was now recording my 'writers tapes' to my smartphones. Sure I dropped one in the toilet on accident and lost the only copy of a hundred songs. But I did it again. That phone was crushed by a car ... another 60 or so songs lost. I lost almost half a years work on a promising new legitimate website made just for songwriters.
Oh, and just for a laugh: The new 4 terabyte drive I just bought to clean off my computer hard drives too. The funny thing, during a session, a musician asked me to format his portable drive. We were talking and I was trying to get out the door. I plugged his unnamed drive in but made the mistake of selecting my NEW unnamed drive and reformating instead. Ha... he..ha.
One of the most interesting (near) losses was (I actually recovered them) was from an old eMac. Our band had purchased an eMac in the early 2000's to record an album on. Of course, over the decade, the digital files somehow got lost. But hey, we still had the computer in a closet. I'll just boot it up and transfer them to a hard drive.
I can't find the article that helped me get this eMac working, but I remember it reading strangely like a disease had corrupted the eMacs of that year. They had used an experimental alloy in the making of the chip and though you could trick it into coming on for a short undefined time, eventually it was going to die of natural causes. Now, of course, I could have pulled the hard drive, and I did. But this is very indicative of the problem we face.
The Cloud is GOD!!!
The cloud seems like a great solution to everything. Really? I happen to know someone who has a company that makes a lot of money helping people back up their Data. Believe me, it's still a nightmare. It's just a dream funded by different companies. Not to say it doesn't help. But basically, your trusting another unproven system and technology ran by proven flawed humans. As all technologies will be because only time will tell. Plus, I work in terabytes now. Have you looked at the price of a terabyte at dropbox?
This too though is an inevitably flawed system. It's basically the old system just more proliferated. More susceptible to the coming hacking terrorist. Heck, we now no our own CIA is creating the best viruses to take down networks. I have other life case studies of using the cloud that turned out in DATA losses also, but I'll save those. I think you get the point. For now, search for 'Your data is not safe in the cloud' and you'll find plenty of reasons not to fully trust this new/old system.
Surely Itunes and CDBaby will preserve our music!
We'll leave the reality that these streaming sites have compressed versions of our music, not the masters, to the side for this article. But, at least the music is everywhere all over the world safe with greedy behemoth corporations who pay us nothing. Right?
“They were people whose lives were slow, who did not see themselves growing old, or falling sick, or dying, but who disappeared little by little in their own time, turning into memories, mists from other days until they were absorbed into oblivion.” ― Gabriel García Márquez
Some distributors like CDBABY have a 'forever ' guarantee. But for other reasons, publishing reasons, and marketing reasons had to remove my songs from digital distribution several times. If you want any control at all, then you have to pay a monthly fee. A few years after your gone, who will preserve your music on the internet? I just recently removed 99% of all my music from all stores. I plan to put them back up – but say I get hit by a bus tomorrow?
I was a little more optimistic when users were downloading copies. But now, that's even becoming very rare. It's a streaming world. No one owns anything or has anything.
Do you remember mp3.com? Do you remember Myspace.com? Ya, I had lots of songs on those platforms also until they just didn't show up for work one day.
You think it won't happen to the big Kmarts of music streaming. But, I promise it will. Think of Pandora. It's in trouble. I predict it will be squished into the fat belly of Spotify in the coming two years.
Will The Song Never End
I hold ideas that material things don't need to exist after I'm gone. So, in the big scheme, it's not a big deal. My main concern is just keeping sogs existing long enough for me to finally do them up'right in this lifetime. And, I've failed horribly at that mission.
As a result of all the loses, I've become even lazier in backing up files, recording new songs on my iPhone, and generally giving a hoot about any songs but the 'era' of songs I'm currently working on.
The truth is, ya, I might have written a lot of songs, but there is a natural filtering system of good songs. They get recorded and copied over and over, so of my best songs, I've lost very few.
“I Think it is lost.....but nothing is ever lost nor can be lost. ” ― Walt Whitman
My parent's album will probably outlive most of my digital albums. Especially if we find the Master Tapes. But in some ways, even if they are lost, they will live on. Though I'm far from a Gospel Band myself, their music lives on in me. I sometimes think I'm just trying to make music that makes me feel like I felt as a child listening to them on stage and in the studio. I now have a daughter, she's already crazy talented in music and art. My son is also a great music lover. I have no doubt that my songs will far outlive me too.
So what are we to do?
I hate leaving the conversation with no solutions. Instead of pointing to some good technologies for storage. I'll end with the most tried and true technology. Share your music. Make great music that persists in hearts and minds. Co-Create with others. Make the world apart of your creation.
Though Kompoz.com which is a creative commons community, was a phase for me. I found the problems it caused in my music life out weighted its usefulness at this era in my music. BUT, I bet those 160 or so projects on there will probably have a better chance of any other. Using Creative Commons ads an extra sauce for longevity. Because people added their heart to those songs. The songs now are also their concern to preserve. Not just one guy and his broken hard drives.
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@OriginalWorks
1. kompoz.com image
2. image of my parents record
3. fosketts.net
[4. Vint Cerf ](vinton cerf, VP Google.jpg)
5. my parents album
6. reverb.com tape machine
7. promise land cd
8. can tape
9. wired ..imacs
10. Gypsy Tree album
11 Casette Tape
12 disk rot
13 ADAT tape
14 Drobo
15 weight of being
16 tape backup
17 crushed Iphone
18 eMac
19 fireball cloud
20 TOM