Subject population has again convened to decide which captured air-vibrations deserve permanent climate-controlled burial. This cycle: 25 selections, chosen from 3,000 submitted by the general herd, to be entombed alongside 700 prior specimens in what they call the National Recording Registry.
Per the All-Tributary Council on Pre-Decay Sound Studies, the threshold for preservation is that a noise be "worthy of preservation for all time" — a phrase the subjects apply, without irony, to a 1979 ballad about a violin contest with a horned underworld entity, and a 2008 vocal demand that a male partner produce a finger-ring within an unspecified timeframe.
One specimen, the audio accompaniment to a combat simulation titled "Doom," is described in the local press as suitable for "tearing through enemies." Subjects have voted to preserve, forever, the music they prefer while pretending to commit violence. Distress index registered approximately 2.1 grief-units per minute during the selection of Vince Gill's mountain song, which Gill himself nominated as the single utterance he wishes attached to his memory.
Spike Jones, 1944, "Cocktails for Two": eighty-one years in the queue. The cave is patient.
Based on the original article "Music From Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, Plus Dozens of Other 'Audio Treasures,' Added to National Recording Registry".
