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Re: [microsound] Collectibility of Digital Files?




On Feb 16, 2005, at 2:48 AM, Kevin Ponto wrote:

By "collector", I think he meant someone who is interested in the rare finds and complete catalogs, bootlegs and so forth as well as huge libraries, as opposed to people who just amass as many files as they can with little regard for what they have.

The point of course, is that the limitations of physical distribution have provided people with the pastime of collecting, yet the digital distribution model is not hampered by these limitations. So will collecting, in this sense, survive and if it does, how will it differ from today?

Personally, I've had the experience of trying to track down a rare mp3 online. it's no easy chore, almost as hard as trying to track down something in real life. It was an mp3 that was only posted to an artists website for a few weeks. I grabbed it and had for a while, then I lost it (fried computer parralled a physically corrupted backup cd) and spent six months or so trying o track it down on p2p networks and the internet before I found it again. The whole experience, and the rush I got when I finally found it, was not unlike that of physical collecting.

Anyone else have a similar experience or insight?

Collecting is an obsessive behavior. My obsessive behaviors come out in other ways.


I have thought about this in the past. One thing I came up with was releasing mp3s on my site, and then having the server remove them after N number of downloads. Of course such an effort is easily thwarted by any number of means. I think its best to give up the idea of collecting really.

Actually, I do sort of collect stuffed octopi...

- John


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