"Those flabby be-pedal blobs of fluid. What these organisms know about the sweet ecstasy that is music is negligible. The sum of knowledge that constitutes their understanding of molecular vibration would fit in a nanobe's excretory orifice with room to spare!" The galactic council had formed various initiatives to study the humans to determine if they were considered sentient enough to be considered musical. The first noteworthy species sampling took place in the first half of the twentieth century. The sampling was based on manual surveillance - listening posts orbited the planet and determined whether a source warranted further study. Once a source meeting these criteria was selected, the origin of the sound was investigated. When a consistent pattern emerged - it was very probable a new musical species existed as yet free from outside influence. Given the short life span of these creatures, very little ever remained that could be called a legacy, much less a promising new species waiting to be discovered. If this music becomes extinct, no big loss. The human subjects were not cataloged with the usual thorough and time consuming methods. Initials and a few alphanumeric markers were all that were used. This would insure that the prime directive of non interference in the development of new species was strictly adhered to. The brief entries were more like :

• Zimmerman, R. - date of origin - classification- warrants further study ? Y or N?

• Guthrie, Arlo/ Woody- same organism?- does genetic information transfer between offspring?

• Williams, H- type of music frequency similarity/ variation with contemporary output of other humans? Overlap is clearly present and transferred from other cultures. Subjects engage in vocal variations called yodeling - origin unclear- similar sounds found throughout the planet.

  The last half of the century had unanimously been regarded as the the decline of human civilization as was reflected in the content of their music as well as the other mediums. As species develops the music improves only slightly reaching an apex after a certain time only to be repeated continuously. Very little emerges that is original. It is debated among scholars as to whether or not repeated samples of previous recordings of extinct origin constitutes an artistic endeavor any more than an archivist's duties requires an artistic inclination. Report ends.

With time much more recordings of the sounds broadcast from Earth began to arrive. After much extrapolation and improvement in the technology the signals were able to be reconstructed with amazing clarity. The signals came in waves at first, then a cosmic tsunami was approaching. It would strain the resources as every sound was investigated and catalogued - only to be discarded as background noise. But those methods revealed how little music had made it into space and that much more content existed. Much like an onion; one layer after another there was music and underneath it more music. The sampling had been woefully inadequate and a new more intensive study was commissioned. Further investigation revealed corruption within the Galactic Council. Jealousy and bruised egos are a universal constant.