https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html
It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business -- and almost nobody knew. This is the story of the 2008 Universal fire


Just reading that beyond excellent full length article really made me realize just how massive a job ASCAP, BMI, SESAC has sampling the waves for each artist. The sheer size is almost as if I have more time to walk around the Earth once or twice in my lifetime and actually accomplish that feat than I would to listen to one thousanths of a sheer millions of the music that exists in any form, memory or out of a instrument live and every way between. As a musician myself, i am but one unseen individual drop of water gushing from Niagara Falls in an hour but I'm there. Sure that's an overstatement but I hope that gets you to thinking of exactly how precious beyond spoken and written words all that music, lost forever is and how vitally inseparable music is to everyone ever to before and for the rest of mankind to be is. Take the music away and just consider it an outright emotional, psychological and eventually physically detonated nuclear grenade from inside a persons soul and I most humbly sincerely mean that fully. Maybe it's the fact that i have a new DNA dad and my best friend is going through pace maker surgery but I am left with tears streaming down my face.

“Just reading that beyond excellent full length article really made me realize just how massive a job ASCAP, BMI, SESAC has sampling the waves for each artist” – William

I’ve seen you mention this before. Not sure what you’re saying. ASCAP registers titles, not wav files. I’m sure there’s a select group of artists/ writers that have their wav files monitored. But I don’t see ASCAP doing massive wav file sampling. Maybe I’m not understanding you.

John

You are trying to make a joke on my loose use of "waves' for airwaves?