It’s been a while since I wrote anything on this blog, because I’ve sort of run up against a bit of a dead end with it. Not in the sense that there’s little left to say – quite the opposite. The more I look into this, the more it becomes a problem of ‘where do you even start?’

Because the thing is, while the unchecked decay of magnetic tape is still an incredibly important issue, and a really interesting topic within music archiving in the digital age, it’s one that needs concentrated attention from someone who can really focus on the issue. I want to raise the flag, and perhaps do my bit – but this is a bigger issue than I can handle alone.

Fortunately, there are some great people tackling aspects of the debate. Copyright reformists, archivists, free culture advocates and others are tackling issues relating directly to the problem of the vast majority of popular music recordings that have been locked away, never again to see the light of day. These people are experts in their specific areas of this discussion, and to complete a book on this issue would be to synthesise all of that expertise and present it as a single case.

And so this blog has been sitting idle, partly because I felt that I perhaps wasn’t the best person to be carrying this issue as a crusade, partly because that task of synthesis and advocacy is one that would be all-consuming (though important), but mostly because, for me, it felt like an important part of what I talk about, rather than the whole story.