First, some background: what is music preservation? People and organizations for some time have worked to ensure that cultural works and folk arts are preserved for future enjoyment and study. The zeitgeist changes, recordings disappear, and things are lost. It takes an active approach to keep things from disappearing into the aether. A century ago, ethnomusicologists like John and Alan Lomax travelled around with mobile recording studios, back in the early days of vinyl records, and took recordings of traditional music that was otherwise locked away in regional pockets. Their recordings were placed in archives, and in some cases spread to record labels, which also gave musicians such as the influential blues musician Leadbelly more of a platform. Thanks to their work, many decades later, we can go back and listen to recordings of long dead musicians performing musical genres that might not even be active anymore.
To this day, the National Archive of the United States engages in preservation efforts for traditional music, creating recordings of live performances and storing them. (They also store copies of releases from major record labels.) This is something I got to participate in myself once, as a volunteer at a music festival. I got to operate a hard drive based audio recorder hooked up to the mixing board, punching a marker button for each song and taking notes of the timestamps and any names the artist mentioned.
I feel like this concept is increasingly relevant to the vocal synth music community. We have a vibrant mixed media subculture that now spans at least 15 years (15 years Anno Miku, longer since the first release of Vocaloid) and reaches across many national borders. As time goes on, we're slowly picking up more and more instances of lost media due to unreliability of video hosts, artist deaths, deliberate deletions and whatnot. Some of that is remediated by fans reuploading things, but that only goes so far. Efforts like Archive.org don't really touch sites like YouTube and NicoNico, because the resources to mirror that much video data would be incredible. (It would be a sad day indeed if Luka Luka Night Fever became difficult to find and watch.)
It recently came to my attention that, for whatever reason, Doriko is closing their Nico Nico Douga and YouTube channels, and taking the videos private.
Google Translate:
Every song or book or movie is a part of history, and it's always a shame to lose things.
To this day, the National Archive of the United States engages in preservation efforts for traditional music, creating recordings of live performances and storing them. (They also store copies of releases from major record labels.) This is something I got to participate in myself once, as a volunteer at a music festival. I got to operate a hard drive based audio recorder hooked up to the mixing board, punching a marker button for each song and taking notes of the timestamps and any names the artist mentioned.
I feel like this concept is increasingly relevant to the vocal synth music community. We have a vibrant mixed media subculture that now spans at least 15 years (15 years Anno Miku, longer since the first release of Vocaloid) and reaches across many national borders. As time goes on, we're slowly picking up more and more instances of lost media due to unreliability of video hosts, artist deaths, deliberate deletions and whatnot. Some of that is remediated by fans reuploading things, but that only goes so far. Efforts like Archive.org don't really touch sites like YouTube and NicoNico, because the resources to mirror that much video data would be incredible. (It would be a sad day indeed if Luka Luka Night Fever became difficult to find and watch.)
It recently came to my attention that, for whatever reason, Doriko is closing their Nico Nico Douga and YouTube channels, and taking the videos private.
Google Translate:
I've already seen some people on Twitter talking about downloading everything and stashing it on Google Drive or whatever, but it really reminded me that there should be more of a concerted effort to archive as much of this (or internet-specific culture in general) as possible, whether it's individual data hoarders downloading their favorite videos instead of trusting them to remain online, gaining the attention of an established musical preservation organization, or some enterprising individual starting one.(Important notice) The current doriko OFFICIAL WEBSITE and doriko Official YouTube Channel will be closed at 23:59 on October 31, 2022. Also, at the same time, most of the videos uploaded to Nico Nico Douga after December 2011 will be private.
Every song or book or movie is a part of history, and it's always a shame to lose things.
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