"If an album isn't online, does it really exist?" That's PANAMA JACKSON of VERY SMART BROTHAS asking one of the essential philosophical questions of the streaming age, having just spent $25 for a CD copy of DE LA SOUL IS DEAD, which he's long considered his favorite album, and which he already owned on CD, but "just to look for the CD, I’d have to unload my storage unit, and then go through each box of CDs I have—and I own thousands of CDs, so it’s many many boxes," so he bought it again so he could copy it to his computer and listen via ICLOUD, but he still can't easily share it with anyone else, such as his nephew who he's trying to educate about '90s hip-hop, and he fears his favorite album is slowly disappearing into the pop-culture ether. His nephew, like Panama himself, is going to hear a lot more of A TRIBE CALLED QUEST's MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS, which is Panama's other favorite album (everybody should have more than one) and which, unlike "De La Soul Is Dead," can be found on any streaming site, which means he can play it whenever he wants and share it with whomever he wants, plus he's regularly discovering new things within its grooves, which helps keep his love alive. The De La Soul album, like the rest of the band's '80s and '90s discography, is in streaming purgatory and, therefore, not "present in the convo. To me they exist in my mind; to my nieces and nephews the up-and-coming hip hop generation, they don’t at all." Is he right? And what's the proper amount of worrying we should be doing about this, about major pieces of musical heritage that still exist in the increasingly theoretical physical world but not in the increasingly dominant virtual world? Do they really exist? Do they exist to one generation but not to the next one? Has physical existence become some kind of ironic oxymoron? Jackson also cites ADRIANA EVANS' 1997 self-titled debut, which he spent $21 on just so he could have the song "HEY BROTHER," and AALIYAH's infamously gone-missing second and third albums. We all have own favorite lost causes, which might be entire runs of albums from some fairly significant 20th century artists or, perhaps, a GRAMMY-winning modern composer who really, really doesn't want to have anything to do with the streaming economy (which at least means the choice is hers, as opposed to her weird uncle's). I'm having a small obsession at the moment with A'ME LORAIN's 1989 dance-pop album STARRING IN STANDING IN A MONKEY SEA, which featured the BILLBOARD top 10 hit "WHOLE WIDE WORLD" (also, this) and which has been wiped from streaming existence. On SPOTIFY, A'me Lorain currently exists as an artist with five monthly listeners, no "About" page and a grand total of three songs, all from the 2010s, none of which have the whole wide world within them. Does her fleeting pop career still exist? Of course it does. I have the CD. If my internet goes out, I still have it. I don't have to worry about her label losing the rights and having to pull the album down, or someone in her camp replacing the album I love with a badly remastered, remixed or rerecorded facsimile. My copy of "Starring in..." probably has better fidelity than Spotify's copy of "Midnight Marauders." But I can't add it to a playlist. I can't email it to my nephew. As far as the current conversation is concerned, the album doesn't exist, and she may as well not exist either. I ask this question once a year or so in this space: Why? Who's the manager in charge of this department? What department even is this? Whose job is it, in 2020, to make sure CARDI B's catalog will still exist in accessible form in 2050? Seriously. Whose job? One more pertinent Panama Jackson quote: "This is stupid"... Caveat to the previous 700 words: Almost everything referenced above is available on YOUTUBE, I mean, duh, there are links. But YOUTUBE is an entirely different existential question for the streaming age, and I'm not convinced it can save A'Me Lorain. Or even De La Soul... APPLE MUSIC rebrands BEATS out of streaming existence and puts Nashville on notice... I would like to coin a new word, demo-splaining, which I think is what NICKI MINAJ's lawyer is trying to do to TRACY CHAPMAN's lawyer here... Virtual nightclub turns away 40,000 people, or possibly the same person 40,000 times, it's hard to tell on the internet... RIP PANDIT JASRAJ and COUNT SHELLY.