Doug Henkle wrote:
> I must be the only one who writes strictly for the music fan who 
> wants to know what exists so he can start searching for it with the 
> reasonable expectation of purchasing it and listening to it.  From this 
> point of view, what is the point of my listing a song that was recorded, 
> never released, and with reasonable certainty never will be released?  

If I could predict the future with such assurance, I'd be spending my 
time cataloging Super Lotto numbers instead of matrix number variations 
on 12" singles.

If a recording exists, it can be released. The point of cataloging it is 
to make sure its existence is documented; it's up to the users of that 
documentation to determine what they want to use it for. Among other 
things, if you don't know a recording exists, you can't work to get it 
issued.  If there are unreleased tracks by [artist X] in the vaults 
somewhere, you can be damned sure that SOME fan of that artist wants to 
know about it so they can try to get their hands on them.  And if it 
turns out nobody ever really cares, so what?  You've wasted a couple 
thousand bytes storing the information somewhere.  Big deal.

>> And besides, procedures for cataloging even streaming audio
>> have been documented, so the world will adapt.
> 
> I really want to know how documentation can be written today, published in
 > print, and it will be completely accurate and sufficient in order to
 > find a specific MP3 file and listen to it 75 years from now.

1. Acquire file.
2. Generate MusicBrainz fingerprint for acoustic content.
3. Generate MD5 hash for raw data bytes.
4. Write them down.
5. Wait 75 years.
6. Search Intarweb-o-tha-Future for fingerprint and/or hash.
7. Download.
8. Listen.