This was the scene Christopher Kirkley found in 2009. A musicologist, he traveled to Mali hoping to record the haunting desert blues he loved. But every time he asked people to perform a favorite folk song or ballad, they pulled out their cellphones to play it for him; every time he set up his gear to capture a live performance, he says, “five other kids will be holding their cellphones recording the same thing — as an archivist, it kind of takes you down a couple of notches.”

I know this isn't the focus of the article, but I actually find this really exciting. Not only does it make the preserving of music that much easier, but it also encourages accessibility. Maybe we're at a point where Music Archivists will focus less on recording and more on categorizing, archiving, and studying what other people have recorded. I think that someone like Alan Lomax would have absolutely geeked if he witnessed such a scene.

The internet is a great tool for this reason alone. Things like bandcamp, youtube, what have you helps to expose people to new music and help people discover obscure stuff that could easily have been lost to history. In fact, there's a whole youtube channel dedicated to Alan Lomax's work.