The Day The Music Burned

[Spectral Morn]

Read this and have tissues to hand, its bad

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html

https://longreads.com/2019/06/12/concealing-a-catastrophe-the-day-the-music-burned/

This has been a secret until court records after UMG sued Universal, and revealed the massive legacy of important music masters that are gone. A substantial part of the worlds music legacy is now gone forever.

The artists who no longer have original masters of their music is incredible, this is a tragic event of epic proportions. No proper storage, no fire prevention system. Are these companies suitable guardians of the worlds music heritage.

Makes me wonder all of the music sold by UMG since 2008 claiming from the original master, one must question that. How if they were destroyed in a fire?

Still trying to get my head round this :(:steam:

[Macca]

Most of it was digitally archived already so it's not as big a deal as the article makes out. And the analogue tapes were never going to survive more than a hundred years at the outside no matter how safely they were stored so those originals would have been lost eventually anyway.


I suspect in most case of re-issues 'going back to the original master' means going back to the digital copy of it. Which also explains why all the master tapes were sat in an old warehouse on the back lot with no fire protection. No-one needed them anymore.

[Spectral Morn]

Most of it was digitally archived already so it's not as big a deal as the article makes out. And the analogue tapes were never going to survive more than a hundred years at the outside no matter how safely they were stored so those originals would have been lost eventually anyway.


I suspect in most case of re-issues 'going back to the original master' means going back to the digital copy of it. Which also explains why all the master tapes were sat in an old warehouse on the back lot with no fire protection. No-one needed them anymore.

:eek:

Sure the tapes are going to go eventually, but the original recordings are always going to be superior to any digital copy, and their loss is a big deal. We will have to agree to disagree. Thats like saying a photo copy of the Mona Lisa is enough, if the original was lost.

[Macca]

Not sure they are really comparable although I know what you are saying. When you think that the tapes will degrade just sat there, you'll get print-through and they will get noisier as time goes on and there is nothing that can be done about that. Whereas the Mona Lisa can be preserved 'as is' pretty much indefinitely.


The original tapes that were transferred will have been transferred 100%. If you have the cd of any old analogue recording then you have effectively have the master, nothing is lost. What you are listening to when you play those recordings is the character of whatever reel to reel machine they used for the analogue to digital conversion. :)