Lost amongst most of the hype of the long tail and “niche-ization” of popular culture is exactly the issue you pinpointed: when does even a niche product cost too much? Every reissue still costs money, in many ways (legal, regarding the labyrinth of rights, in particular). Sadly, the alternative to MOD is SOL (or, if one is not squeamish, trolling the internet): i.e., if they can’t figure out a way to make money off of it, it’s not going to happen. This is why those recently discovered Jack Benny radio shows are almost certainly never going to be released. We can’t take DVD releases for granted any more.

Moreover, if I were to gamble, I’d bet that a decade from now recordings commercially released on a physical medium (e.g., a five-inch digitally encoded plastic disc) are going to be marginal to the industry. However, the cost question–the necessity to make money on whatever is made available–will still dictate what we can download.