Isn't that supposed to be the role of The Library of Congress?
"All works under copyright protection that are published in the United States are subject to the mandatory deposit provision of the copyright law (17 USC section 407).
This law requires that two copies of the best edition of every copyrightable work published in the United States be sent to the Copyright Office within three months of publication. Works deposited under this law are for the use of the Library of Congress"
I don't know how/if it works in practice, but if the copyright is supposed "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", I think that it is perfectly fine for the LOC to guarantee that when the copyright expires at least a copy is still around.
This doesn't mean that it should provide universal access though, especially while the copyright is still valid.
(maybe the devil is in the referenced details, but alas I have not time to investigate now)
But my point was more about the matter of principle: it is reasonable for the government to ask a copy of the works (for preservation reasons) in exchange for time-limited rights over it.
Believe it or not, the official role of the Library of Congress is mostly to be a library serving Congress.
Their website says "The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office."
They do keep copies of things registered for copyrights, for copyright purposes.
I don't believe there is any legislation or funding to give them the role of finding and preserving 80 year old 78s en masse.
So “supposed according to whom” is according to law and all of history.
The Lib of Congress (probably not in the copyright office part of it) does have some historical audio recordings in their collection, including digitizations, but I don't think on this scale.
Yes, the Library of Congress actively collects old audio (and even has 450,000 of those old 78s you claimed they don’t gather, and around another million unpublished ones). They have funding and mandates to do so.
This entire thread is you posting opinion as fact, but these opinions are demonstrably false. Before posting things as true please do some due diligence.
It was truly one of the best ways to discover music because behind each recommendation was a human that were both enthralled you were interested and would tailor their recommendations to suit your tastes.
Spotify use to have humans curate their playlists and during this time is was almost as good, but since they've moved to ML models recommendations have gone to truly awful now.