I was in a particular mood the other day, and these are the three things I wanted to listen to: ERIC DOLPHY and RICHARD DAVIS's bass clarinet and bass version of DUKE ELLINGTON's "COME SUNDAY," DR. JOHN's solo piano album DR. JOHN PLAYS MAC REBENNACK and ABDULLAH IBRAHIM's WATER FROM AN ANCIENT WELL. This is not, as anyone who knows me can tell you, a typical evening on the stereo at my house. It's just what I was in the mood for exactly then. I subscribe to four streaming music services so I can feed my mood on demand. But damn if they don't make it difficult. APPLE, SPOTIFY and NAPSTER don't have that "Come Sunday." TIDAL (thank you) does. Why is that? I'm reasonably sure Tidal didn't set out on its own to make that particular deal. The Abdullah Ibrahim album was findable, unless you opened Spotify and went to his artist page. Spotify has the album but doesn't know it's one of his, despite the image of the album cover with his name on it. It's indexed as a "various artists" album and not connected to Ibrahim's catalog. Have fun finding it. The Dr. John album is available to anyone unless you rely on APPLE MUSIC, which has Vol. 2 (formerly titled THE BRIGHTEST SMILE IN TOWN) but not Vol. 1. I could have navigated to my local MP3 download store and found all of this music. But how much longer is that option going to exist? These are, in three different ways, three wonderful recordings in danger of not existing in a near-future world where streaming is most people's only option. Three wonderful recordings that the curators in charge of the future of recorded music have not spent enough (or any) time caring for. This is the unsexy part of curation: conservation, cataloging, preservation. And it's one of a curator's highest obligations. There are plenty of reasons why tracks, albums and entire discographies have gone missing. Lawyers, publishers, contracts. Bad metadata. And then there's a lot that slips through the cracks and out of sight simply because no one who's in a position to care for it does care for it. Curators can and should make it their job to fight through these weeds of chaos and neglect every day. These are battles in need of soldiers. Here's Tidal artist-owner JACK WHITE in 2015: "I want tons of obscure albums that haven't been digitized to be on [Tidal]. LORETTA LYNN recorded something like 90 albums! How many can you acquire or stream digitally? 4? 6? Where are the other 80+?” In fact, Tidal at the time had--and still has--more than six but a lot less than her whole catalog. Artist-owners, talk to your curators. Mind the gaps, and fill them in... Pour one out for HMV CANADA... RIP ELKIN RAMIREZ, CHUCK STEWART, GEOFF NICHOLLS and PHILIP CANNON.