"I'm sure that there are data hoarders somewhere, that have mp3s of all those songs somewhere, but unless we get some p2p type of service like gnutella/ed2k/kazaa working again, I won't be able to find them anymore."
Such archives would need to be kept online though. If only archived (or hoarded), it's just data in a box that no-one can access.
Current internet is really poor at handling this long tail. Eg. a movie can be streamed & torrented, millions see it, many have it in personal archives, but 1 year later the torrent swarm has died out, and those personal archives of the downloaders aren't online. And then copyright holder pulls it from their streaming service.
Result: nowhere to be found. Even though popular not long ago.
Copies in personal archives don't count for much if others can't access that data.
For a long time, “So This is Paris” (1954 starring Tony Curtis) was my white whale, as I could not find a copy anywhere, legally or otherwise. I had seen a clip that somebody had posted on youtube, and wanted to see the full movie. The clip was taken down by a copyright claim, and still the movie was unavailable.
Eventually, after searching on and off for a few years, I found a copy on a Russian streaming site, but the movie has effectively been erased from availability.
Such archives would need to be kept online though. If only archived (or hoarded), it's just data in a box that no-one can access.
Current internet is really poor at handling this long tail. Eg. a movie can be streamed & torrented, millions see it, many have it in personal archives, but 1 year later the torrent swarm has died out, and those personal archives of the downloaders aren't online. And then copyright holder pulls it from their streaming service.
Result: nowhere to be found. Even though popular not long ago.
Copies in personal archives don't count for much if others can't access that data.