NPR did an interesting story about the some of the challenges the Library of Congress faces with preserving audio recordings made during the last 125 years.
Surprisingly, the challenges are not only limited to the recordings made in the early days of audio but those made as recently as 10 years ago due to rapid changes in technology and issues related to ownership of the recordings. And while we often make keywords, descriptions and other metadata entries as part of our workflow as photographers, we often neglect that necessary chore as as part of our audio workflow. Take five minutes and listen to the report and see if it gives you any ideas of why you might want to start adding metadata to your audio files.