If a BLOND tree falls in an ENDLESS forest and no streaming service is around to ingest the metadata, does it make a sound? That's one of the existential questions posed by FRANK OCEAN's acclaimed four-album catalog, half of which is invisible and inaccessible to most casual music fans. Album #1, which contains one of the most notorious uncleared samples of the past decade, was posted online as a free mixtape in 2011 and is still out there for streaming on BANDCAMP. But save for two singles, no label picked it up and it's never been available on SPOTIFY, APPLE or any other subscription service. Album #2 came out the normal way and turned Ocean into what you might call a cult superstar. It's one of the great pop albums of the 2010s. Album #3 was released exclusively to Apple as a single 45-minute video, and three years later that remains the only official place you can find it, although a good chunk of it is available in chopped-up form on YOUTUBE. (There was also a limited-edition CD and vinyl release, which you can currently find on DISCOGS for, respectively, $85 and $186). Album #4 came out a day later and joined #2 as a Frank Ocean album you can access with your $9.99/month subscription. There have always been albums that are hard to find—imports, small indies, out-of-print titles, etc. And there have always been artists like Ocean who follow their own distribution and marketing muses. What's different now, I think, is that the Spotifys and Apples have successfully positioned themselves as repositories for all the music anyone will ever need, and for a good percentage of their subscribers, they may be right. For a lot of people, ENDLESS and NOSTALGIA, ULTRA don't exist, in the same way that TOOL, ANITA BAKER and the best part of the DE LA SOUL catalog have stopped existing. And for a lot of people, that's OK. In the walled garden of a music subscription service, what you see is exactly what you get. What you don't see is not to be seen, not to be gotten and, worse, not to be desired. Reportedly, Ocean is about to upload his third album, ENDLESS, to streaming services, though there's no official release date and the first expected date, Jan. 25, has already passed. When and if the album arrives, it will be a welcome act of un-erasure. For some of us, it will also be a reminder of all that remains erased, some of it perhaps forever... ALANIS MORISSETTE's JAGGED LITTLE PILL is headed to Broadway (and, no, there's nothing ironic about this news; it's just a piece of news)... Tickets for the March 29 ROCK HALL OF FAME induction ceremony in Brooklyn go on sale Friday, with presales ongoing... How tone-deaf are you?