The end of the cosmic jukebox
The other day, I found myself sitting next to Robert Klein at Spamalot. When I was a forlorn teenager, I would spend hours listening to his comedy albums. I memorized his ad for "every record ever recorded… we drive a truck to your house." I resisted temptation and did not recite it for him on Saturday (though I still know it by heart. "Lithuanian Language Records!")
For a long time, I figured that the inevitable was just about to happen. That every record ever recorded would find its way online and if you had a big enough hard drive, you could have them all.
Mark Fraunfelder at Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things points us to THE TOFU HUT where you can find a painstakingly created directory of hundreds of sites pointing to almost a million mp3s. All free.
I no longer believe you can have every record ever recorded. I now know for certain that by the time they drive a truck to your house, a thousand new records will be made.
When everybody can make everything, the amount of clutter reaches a whole new level. When everybody can make everything (Handmade custom Pez dispensers) then the whole idea of clutter at this level changes the way you need to think about supply and demand.
Warner Records is such an anachronism in a world with too much music.