Our cultural history of music is in grave peril and will be lost if we don’t act now.  

The mission of the Music Preservation Project is to secure, digitize, share and exhibit the cultural history of music.

 Magnetic tapes are erasing themselves, records are  warping, paper based artifacts are disintegrating.  Once these one-of-a-kind materials are lost, they are lost forever. 

Many endangered music recordings were originally captured on magnetic tape.  Tape has a limited lifetime of between 10-30 years, after which time the media becomes unrecoverable.  High quality digitization of these materials  absolutely essential in making sure one of our greatest treasures are preserved for generations to come.

There are other dangers facing rare music archives, theft and physical damage by others is taking its toll as well- laying claim too many irreplaceable collections.  One such collection was housed in the Jamaican National Historical Archives in Kingston.   At the end of 2007, Jamaica's Minister of Culture announced that the National Film and Audio archives had fallen victim to thieves who looted it bare.

The Music Preservation Project is currently working with several archives and curators to evaluate the most critical for consideration.   Initially MPP is focusing its resources on preserving Roger Steffens' Reggae Archives.  With the theft and looting in Jamaica, Steffen’s archive is the largest remaining collection of Reggae memorabilia in the world.  It is in critical need of relocation to a safe environment and requires digitization to ensure the irreplaceable material is preserved and shared with the world for generations to come.

The Music Preservation Project and the University of Southern California are working cooperatively to achieve the task at hand.

^{Music Preservation Project is a 501 c3 Organization. All donations are tax deductible.}