Jeez, your government is helping you and your descendants to maintain access to recordings--for practically nothing--and you complain about wasteful spending? It really, really worries you?!
Please, complain (or celebrate, if you liked it) about the trillions of dollars that were spent destroying Iraq and Afghanistan if you want to see where your tax dollars went in the last decade. This amount spent on a music archive is both harmless and utterly, utterly minuscule by comparison.
Now, moving on to a quote from the article,
"Only an estimated 14 percent of pre-1965 commercially released recordings are currently available from rights-holders. Of music released in the United States in the 1930s, only about 10 percent of it can now be readily accessed by the public."
The public; that's who this is for. To get that other 90% out there for whomever wants to listen to it. Leaving it to the "market" is a religious statement, blessed by the church of capitalism but it sure as heck is not an artist's perspective.
Look at how well the "market" served Mozart and Schubert, for starters. Or Van Gogh. Or... really, do I need to go on?
If you want to complain about runaway government spending, there is about a trillion dollars going to military spending each year. By comparison, to complain about a piddling amount to make old recordings accessible to future generations is in pretty tone-deaf bad taste.
Please, complain (or celebrate, if you liked it) about the trillions of dollars that were spent destroying Iraq and Afghanistan if you want to see where your tax dollars went in the last decade. This amount spent on a music archive is both harmless and utterly, utterly minuscule by comparison.
Now, moving on to a quote from the article,
"Only an estimated 14 percent of pre-1965 commercially released recordings are currently available from rights-holders. Of music released in the United States in the 1930s, only about 10 percent of it can now be readily accessed by the public."
The public; that's who this is for. To get that other 90% out there for whomever wants to listen to it. Leaving it to the "market" is a religious statement, blessed by the church of capitalism but it sure as heck is not an artist's perspective.
Look at how well the "market" served Mozart and Schubert, for starters. Or Van Gogh. Or... really, do I need to go on?
If you want to complain about runaway government spending, there is about a trillion dollars going to military spending each year. By comparison, to complain about a piddling amount to make old recordings accessible to future generations is in pretty tone-deaf bad taste.