For the past 3.5 years, I’ve been searching on and off for a particular album: the original soundtrack to the David Attenborough series The Private Life of Plants. This lost album was quite elusive. It wasn’t on any of streaming services, and I couldn’t find a digital copy to buy. The only place I found that had anything was some defunct online music store, archived by the Wayback Machine, that offered a handful of tracks to download.

Archived version of 2ndsight circa 2006 within the Wayback Machine
The album as it appeared in the archived version of 2ndsight. Note the five downloadable tracks.

It was better than nothing, so I download what they had. But I still did searches for the full album occasionally, believing it to be out there somewhere, in one form or another.

Tonight, while doing a few other things, I tried another web search, this time including “BBC” in the search query. And I don’t know what the heck is wrong with the public web searches because I actually got a hit. Turns out that someone — maybe the original site owner — acquired the domain, put a site together, and uploaded a copy of the album for visitors to listen to online.

The modern version of 2ndsight which had the full version of Music From The Private Life of Plants to listen
The full track list of Music From The Private Life of Plants on the modern version of 2ndsight.

You could imagine that I stopped what I was doing and focused on getting a copy. The site offered downloads but they weren’t completely working. But after a bit of time in the browser Dev Tools, I was able to organise my own. Yes, this may not be completely legal, but I’m justifying it this one time, since thee’s no legitimate way to buy it and no knowing for how long this site would be up.

It took a bit of time, but the full album now lives safely on my music server.

The album Music From The Private Life of Plants as it appears in Alto Catalogue, my music server
Music From The Private Life of Plants safe and sound on Alto Catalogue, my music server.

So the search is over. The long elusive album has been found! 🎉