Microsoft formally has our backs for when the approaching apocalypse wipes out our music libraries. The tech big has partnered up with Oslo-based Elire Group’s World Music Vault to accommodate the world’s most necessary music recordings on tiny items of glass.
Collectively, Microsoft and Elire Group have created what they name a Proof of Idea (PoC) glass platter, which can retailer a pattern number of music recordsdata. The PoC platter is concerning the dimension of a coaster, and might maintain 100 gigabytes of information in any digital format, encrypted or unencrypted. A laser encodes information within the platters by creating layers of microscopic engravings, which synthetic intelligence algorithms can then learn again by decoding these photographs and patterns.
Microsoft debuted the PoC platters a number of years in the past as a part of their analysis mission Silica, which makes use of progressive laser optics and machine studying. Beforehand, films — like 1978’s Superman — have been preserved on these tiny however mighty items of know-how.
Elire’s PoC platters will probably be saved in Elire’s World Music Vault, which can share the identical safeguard because the World Seed Vault on Svalbard in far north Norway — aka the unique “Doomsday Vault.” Surprisingly, glass makes a fairly ultimate medium for long-term storage; Its inertness implies that it could possibly stand up to all kinds of strategies — water, fireplace, and many others. — that others could use to try to tamper with it.
“With over 4 million music producers globally, and over 60,000 songs being launched simply on Spotify daily, in the present day’s digital and bodily information storage options are shortly changing into outdated, irrelevant and a threat to our future,” Luke Jenkinson, Managing Director of World Music Vault, mentioned in a press launch. “We not solely wish to put this excessive on the worldwide music business agenda, we wish to work with the perfect corporations on the planet to search out options. As we wish to provide the worldwide music ecosystem an everlasting resolution, we imagine that Microsoft’s Silica is that actual resolution for our storage wants.”
However deciding which music must be preserved gained’t be a simple feat. Elire has teamed up with the Paris-based Worldwide Music Council to type a worldwide committee that can collaborate with nationwide music enterprise teams to pick out the “most treasured and beloved” music from everywhere in the world. The general public can also be anticipated to have the ability to vote on submissions.
