There are three groups of people who want to preserve rare or obscure recordings:
1) The creators themselves
2) Music aficionados
3) Music historians
The consumer public, copyright holders, licensees, and paid-distribution entities (where most of the money exchanges hands) do not.
Record labels and other aggregate copyright holders don't care about each individual catalog entry much unless its currently generating revenue worth the overhead to be on top of, if that makes sense.
At a certain point it's a liability in the large.
Places like what.cd thrived on the obscure, and just as a bittorrent client prioritizes grabbing the rarest fragments first, what.cd's ratio bounty system and community also rewarded those who would unearth and organize everything; catering to groups 2/3 above, and sometimes even 1.
All you could trade on there is expertise, access, and time.
The consumer public, copyright holders, licensees, and paid-distribution entities (where most of the money exchanges hands) do not.
Record labels and other aggregate copyright holders don't care about each individual catalog entry much unless its currently generating revenue worth the overhead to be on top of, if that makes sense.
At a certain point it's a liability in the large.
Places like what.cd thrived on the obscure, and just as a bittorrent client prioritizes grabbing the rarest fragments first, what.cd's ratio bounty system and community also rewarded those who would unearth and organize everything; catering to groups 2/3 above, and sometimes even 1.
All you could trade on there is expertise, access, and time.