The storage of anything is only as good as our ability to retrieve it, not the ease in which we can store it or how readily the data can be replicated. Any database (which is all any storage system is) is only as good as its indexing system - it does not matter how smart the query language, if the index is corrupt or lost so is the data. If something is valuable then the safeguards will be in-place to ensure the security of the data and all links to it - but for everyday data, like the millions of mp3 files that exist throughout the internet and over millions of PCs those security measures are not in place. If the next big thing is a highly compressed lossless format (let's call it μFLAC™ so I can get rich on the royalties) then those mp3s will fall into redundancy in a very short space of time ... people will just delete them and/or the links that point to them, with no guarantee that all the deleted data would have been converted to the emergent format first.

stefolof wrote: If I had access to all necessities in life and was able to survive, I wouldn't mind about reaching out. The music itself is the reward for me. The special feeling I get when mixing certain types of melodies, rhythms, harmonies and sounds - that's the driving force. All else is just expectations of society.

 Isn't that the same as just noodling at home and keeping your music to yourself?

stefolof wrote: We've all been told that "one should earn his living from the sweat of his brow". Well, if that was true, we wouldn't have been given the ability to build tools, machines and robots. All boring, monotonous jobs should be automated (and in fact, it's happening) so that people would have more time for their own creative ideas.

That's not working too well at the moment - automation replaces the wrong strata of "workers" from the economic system. In the current system the people in the manufacturing industries support those in the service industries who in turn support those in the academic/research industries and they all support those in the entertainment industries. Ironically, automation not only removed a skilled and semi-skilled layer from the employment pool, it also wiped-out an entire layer of middle-managers and support staff who possessed few practical or useful skills. The current (western) economic model has shown that removing the manufacturing industries does not create more jobs in the service industries, so the problem is delayed by moving the overspill into academia - more people are going into further education and they are staying there longer - but there is nothing for them to do when they leave but go into the already overloaded service sector, or become educators for the next generation of academics. The entertainment industry is only sustainable when all the other levels are producing a surplus of wealth, even though it does create wealth of its own in the form of "product" it is not an essential "product".

 

What we haven't experienced (yet) is a drastic reduction in working hours that would facilitate the Utopia you desire. The average working week in Europe is still longer than it was in the 14th Century (and that wasn't exactly a hot-bed of creative output... well, except Dante and Chaucer).