The Day the Music Burned

Just the most recent slate of inductees alone (from a few months back) is pretty bomb:

https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/recording-registry/registry-by-induction-years/2018/

also kind of odd that 100+ posts in and no one has delved into why this thing that happened 10 years ago is just being brought to light now

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, June 12, 2019 2:50 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not sure what there is to delve in besides "major corporation lies like a motherfucker"

sure but what tipped Jody R. off, why was the archivist able/willing to talk now (is he no longer employed by UMG, who surely would've tried to shut him up?), how is it none of the impacted artists (and their laywers) went looking for their masters in this period and figured it out, etc.

On the Hoffman forums, there are a couple of quotes from liner notes in which the fire is mentioned, like this one from a Sugar Pie DeSanto compilation: "It was reported recently that her Chess masters were among those destroyed in a fire at the tape storage facility in 2008". There's also a Richard Carpenter interview in which he mentions the loss of multi-tracks in the fire.

I brought up that bit about the DeSanto masters upthread. That's one of those things that only came to light because Kent was doing the comp when they did it (released in 2009).

Part of how they were able to cover it up for so long is that the fire so closely coincided w/the downturn in physical media. UMG could dial back their reissue projects and provide lesser masters to streaming services where the audio issues wouldn't be so obvious listeners where already conditioned to lower quality audio.

Just noticed on the AMG that UMG did a digital-only comp of all the Chess Sugar Pie DeSanto stuff (35 tracks in total) a couple years ago.

A local film guy I follow wrote a blog post about the fire back in 2008. Interesting to read in retrospect:

https://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2008/06/universal-fire.html

how is it none of the impacted artists (and their laywers) went looking for their masters in this period and figured it out, etc.

a bunch of them did! this was a pretty open secret in the business. it's been talked out here and there, written about here and there, it's just that no one thought to (or had the time and money to) tell it as a story with a capital S in the new york times magazine before. this is not uncommon.

seen elsewhere:

from someone on the ARSC listserv: "I headed one of the NYC teams that did some of the transfers back in 2010. As soon as the insurance money ran out, the plug was pulled on the entire operation, which is why so little of the holdings were transferred. They just were not going to spend their money."

Worth a read:

https://www.instagram.com/p/ByqCioill0S/

It's wild to think how much history they could have saved for, like, the price of not signing Iggy Azalea

Surely they would've had less money without Iggy?

I was just listening to Mike Mills' interview on the goofy R U Talkin REM Re:Me podcast, and it reminded me that Monster was slated to be reissued October 2019. The announcement was made months ago, so you'd think it'd be a little more clear by now whether or not the masters were available.

finally a chance to hear that impossible-to-find CD!

that instagram post is beyond nuts, wtf

XPS Monster was a Warner Bros. album, so it shouldn't have been in the fire. I believe it's the IRS albums that may or may not have been destroyed.

Yeah correct

If his conscience bothered him, why didn’t he just ask someone if he could take them. They were in the trash ffs.

Ah, that's right. I just assume UMG owned everything.

Xp Me, I would have that in my bag in no time.

re: that Instagram post, there are many stories of bootlegs being released that originated as tapes found in the trash. The Who had to negotiate with some dumpster-diving bootleggers in order to retrieve a multitrack master for a reissue project back in the early '90s.

Hey Tarfumes...was this you just now? (Good thread!)

1/12 Ahoy! Here's a long-arse thread about @jodyrosen's expertly-reported NYTimes piece on the Universal Music Group tape vault fire.

— Matt Weston (@tarfumes) June 14, 2019

Indeed it was! (And thanks!)

You guys are so weirdly obsessed with the B-F, O-S thing

Well, Jody himself addressed it just now w/r/t the thread:

Nothing my reporting suggests there's validity to this claim. Backlot vault held all Decca tape-era masters. All Chess masters. ABC, MCA, A&M, Geffen, Interscope. And many sublabels of all/above. UMG didn't divide up what was archived where based on alphabetization. https://t.co/C4cBduSuc7

— Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen) June 14, 2019

Just trying to correct/verify the claim. Questlove made it sound like someone took physical inventory post-fire and came to that conclusion.

It begins.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-umg-fire-recordings-lawsuits-universal-studios-20190613-story.html

https://twitter.com/extinctophonics

Cool account but how is this person even sourcing this?

Or should I say, Cool idea for an account, but what basis is any of it rooted in fact instead of presupposition

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8516256/umg-archivist-interview-universal-fire-masters-tapes-litigation

UMG person sez:

The extent of the losses was overstated. Many of the masters that were highlighted as destroyed, we actually have in our archives -- the Impulse [Records]/[John] Coltrane stuff, Muddy Waters, [jazz pianist] Ahmad Jamal, [gospel label] Nashboro Records, Chess Records, to name a few. Those are some of the things we've gone through. Just in the last two days, we've found those examples in the archives.

so now it's he said/she said former archivist vs. current archivist

this whole story is weird

Could “we actually have in our archives” there mean “we have a good copy in our archives but it isn’t the masters”?

Gee, a big Billboard feature that accepts/amplifies one of the big three record labels' spin on a subject that could throw said label's entire business into a death spiral? Why wouldn't I trust this guy and take his word for it?

whiney RE: Extinctophonics, that account was sent to me by an archivist who i trust but that's all the sourcing i got

"Just in the last two days" strikes me as a very weird thing to say there

it marks the moment in which they've been coached to pretend to care

Could “we actually have in our archives” there mean “we have a good copy in our archives but it isn’t the masters”?

yeah isnt that exactly what they said last time in the article - not specifically talking about masters but saying things like "nothing was lost that we dont have a backup of" or something like that?

Like, isn't there a database that corresponds to what they have? It shouldn't take two days to look, it should take two minutes!

Like, isn't there a database that corresponds to what they have? It shouldn't take two days to look, it should take two minutes!

Nope. There is no massive digital database of everything a label has released, never mind what they own. It's all written down, shoved in a file cabinet somewhere, and nobody cares because their minds are on whatever they're putting out this quarter.

I mean think of all the tape generated by just a single recording session; I can see how keeping track of all the historical assets of an entity like UMG would be a mammoth undertaking.

Could “we actually have in our archives” there mean “we have a good copy in our archives but it isn’t the masters”?

― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Tuesday, June 18, 2019 2:58 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Likely. It would take far longer than two days to determine if This Tape is The Master Tape, to say nothing of "all the Coltrane stuff" and "the Chess masters."

Kraus, who spoke with frustration and wonky passion

why not just schedule the full glamour photoshoot

Thanks for the new dn!

you guys are remarkably credulous. basically there's two archivists - neither of which has a comprehensive picture of what happened or what was destroyed or what exists elsewhere - disagreeing. no clarity will be forthcoming, not for years.

It would take far longer than two days to determine if This Tape is The Master Tape, to say nothing of "all the Coltrane stuff" and "the Chess masters."

they've had 11 years!

maybe they didn't have an easy to navigate written record of every last tape in every last warehouse, but one would like to think that sometime in the 11 years between 2008 and 2019 someone at the company would have said, "fuck, did we lose all the impulse and chess masters?" and that someone would have followed up by actually checking.

the "two days" comment from the current archivist strongly suggests this wasn't, in fact, ever done. which is mind-boggling.

Internal memo from UMG's head (nothing really new in it): https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8516565/universal-music-group-lucian-grainge-vault-fire-owe-artists-transparency

hands up, how many people armchair archiving in this thread have ever cataloged a tape vault

*raises hand*

one would like to think that sometime in the 11 years between 2008 and 2019 someone at the company would have said, "fuck, did we lose all the impulse and chess masters?" and that someone would have followed up by actually checking.

Except that they more or less shuttered their reissue domestic reissue divisions in the years after the fire. Upthread it's mentioned that the so-called "Project Phoenix" stopped the minute the last penny from the insurance settlement was spent, laving many projects in permanent limbo. I can imagine when it came to creating streaming masters they just ripped stuff close at hand from harddrives or even CDs.

I can imagine when it came to creating streaming masters they just ripped stuff close at hand from harddrives or even CDs.

When I worked at Roadrunner (a division of WMG, not Universal), I put together four "digital box sets" from their catalog:

Extreme Metal 101, Vol. 1

Extreme Metal 101, Vol. 2

Extreme Metal 101, Vol. 3

Extreme Metal 101, Vol. 4

All of those were ripped from CDs, some of which had been out of print since the late '80s or early '90s.

I can imagine when it came to creating streaming masters they just ripped stuff close at hand from harddrives or even CDs.

Then sent it to Spotify iTunes et al but not before applying audibly disfiguring watermark technology to it