Continuing: At a computer museum, you can't miss the point that, sooner or later, every recording format eventually gets left in the dust.

In fact, these days, new formats are coming faster and faster, and each one expires faster than what came before it.

"There's a consensus that as the ability to store more and more data [increases], the data itself has become less and less reliable," said Don Mennerich, an archivist at the New York Public Library.

He's been working on preserving some historic 1968 audio interviews with rock stars: Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, The Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Brian Wilson, Carl Wilson, Mike Love of The Beach Boys, Phil Everly.

In 1996 the library tried to rescue those 30-year-old recordings by transferring them to fresh, brand-new tapes. But Mannerich says now, less than 12 years later, "those tapes are already significantly degraded.

"The tape actually, physically will shed against the head of the tape player, u