The Day the Music Burned

"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

Aka this is now the second reason for me to despise UMG.

haha Jon I was waiting for you to bring that up, it's been on my mind as well

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

― valet doberman (Jon not Jon), Tuesday, June 18, 2019 6:09 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Where can I hear this?!

WOW, forgot all about that...

https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark

It damages some kinds of music more than others, but you should still be able to hear it on any UMG-owned track which was supplied to streaming and download vendors prior to mid 2013. Ensemble vocals, pianos, acoustic guitars and strings played quietly are the most harmed in my experience.

If the same track appears on a reissue or remaster issued later than mid-2013 (iirc - older posts by me will have this date correct) it will sound better. They either stopped using the watermarks or dialed it back to be virtually inaudible.

wow

In the classical realm, this is why recently issued massive box sets along the lines of “such and such pianist - the complete Deutsche Grammofon recordings” have been very welcome on Spotify- even if not remastered, (and such things usually aren’t, they’re just straight up recompilations) they have been reconverted from UMGs lossless files for the occasion and thus are absent the nasty distortion which was formerly SOP.

Xp to self

Still hoping the complete Alfred brendel Decca box will appear on Spotify, for example, cause vast tracts of his recordings are only on there in shit form.

End of digression

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

*raises hand*

I haven't read the thread or posted until now, but I've catalogued film and video and tape vaults, and made slightly successful and wildly unsuccessful efforts to get a large organisation to undertake subsequent preservation actions

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

*raises hand*

HI DERE

Taking sides:
1. cataloging the archive of a behemoth major label that's absorbed multiple labels over many decades.
2. cataloging the archive of a research/experiment group of an academic department that had been collecting data for years and then published - only now it's ten years later and someone needs to go back over the data. btw, the group disbanded and the data is all in a format you can't read.
3. cataloging the 30+ year archive of a indie record label that was also run by an occasionally paranoid, full-time druggy, hoarder.

Is it any wonder the original Apollo 11 television tapes were lost?

was there more to this https://twitter.com/extinctophonics account than shows up now?

Yes, as the text of the one tweet there now indicates.

Y'all oldtimers will remember how I big-upped a synthpop "one man band" called Language, really a project by percussionist and singer Steven Hale that also included Gang of Four lead singer Jon King's sister Debbie and Eddi Reader, before she went on to fame in Fairground Attraction ("Perfect"). They were very short-lived, releasing one EP and a few singles, all produced by Alan Shacklock (chosen because he produced Junior's "Mama Used to Say", which Hale was a huge fan of). In fact, I almost reverted back to one of my old display names for the summer, "Goodbye Indian Summer", which was the name of the first Language song I ever heard, before choosing this one. Language were an A&M recording act, and after seeing how A&M were one of the impacted labels I PMed Mr. Hale (a FB friend of mine) to ask if he'd ever heard anything about this and if he knew where his masters were. Of course he didn't know a thing about what had happened and I have yet to hear back from him after PMing him a link to this article. This could be an example of one of those lesser-known artists impacted by this fire, a recording artist that would have been best served by a remaster because of how under-appreciated they were and how much better their music would sound if it were remastered in crystal clear digital sound. I'm really hoping Mr. Hale comes back to me saying that the masters are located elsewhere, because it would be a real shame if they ended up being lost to the flames. Also, while you're at it, look up "Goodbye Indian Summer" and "We're Celebrating" (and the music video for "Touch the Radio Dance", which was once displayed at MoMA) because Mr. Hale's music was really, really good.

Hmmm....

It appears that the Steve Hoffman Forum thread on Jody Rosen's The Day The Music Burned was pulled from the site today after it reached 67/68 pages.

— Stephen Thomas Erlewine (@sterlewine) June 19, 2019

they knew too much?

couldn't let it get too nice

Steve Hoffman himself now in undisclosed location.

i assume someone made safety copies of him in case he can't be found.

They did, but apparently that copy has after the fact harmony overdubs by the Picks, so it's just not the same.

What an unimaginable loss

I’d been keeping up with that thread, more-or-less, and Hoffman only chimed in to say, “Should we keep the thread going or not?” It seemed like there were potential legal issues for Steve in keeping it going (or so Steve thought). In the years after the fire and before the Times piece, threads about what might’ve been lost in the fire were routinely deleted.

Really? Insane. I'm surprised the users didn't start a new board over that.

Thread is still there in the ‘Off Topic’ section at time of posting.

Of course it may now be a back-up copy rather than the original master.

lmao

original timestamps lost forever

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-universal-music-fire-lucian-grainge-memo-lawsuits-20190618-story.html

Genuine contrition, or damage control?

At least UMG is up 2 something kewl:
https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/youtube-music-and-universal-music-group.html

xpost -- gotta be the latter.

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/vivendi-universal-music-group-fire-noise-arnaud-de-puyfontaine-1203248649/

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/universal-music-fire-zero-impact-on-company-value-1203249173/