not one reply !!!

175,000 mastertapes lost estimated 500,000 song titles” were lost.

Among the incinerated Decca masters were recordings by titanic figures in American music: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland. Billie Holiday Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five Patsy Cline.

The fire most likely claimed most of Chuck Berry’s Chess masters and multitrack masters, a body of work that constitutes Berry’s greatest recordings. The destroyed Chess masters encompassed nearly everything else recorded for the label and its subsidiaries, including most of the Chess output of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Etta James, John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy and Little Walter. Also very likely lost were master tapes of the first commercially released material by Aretha Franklin, recorded when she was a young teenager performing in the church services of her father, the Rev. C.L. Franklin, who made dozens of albums for Chess and its sublabels.

Virtually all of Buddy Holly’s masters were lost in the fire. Most of John Coltrane’s Impulse masters were lost, as were masters for treasured Impulse releases by Ellington, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders and other jazz greats. Also apparently destroyed were the masters for dozens of canonical hit singles, including Bill Haley and His Comets

I'm wondering how many titles are out there as being from the master tapes that were produced AFTER this 2008 fire, or am I being too suspicious as to why we're only finding out now.

Strange I read it no problem

Does anyone really care? Doubt it. There are plenty of master tapes of other artists and most of the current generation dont give a rats arse about master tapes as their idea of music is an iphone and those shitty white earbuds. FACT.

Its not the biggest disaster anyway and the article is over 10 years old.

Apple are the biggest disaster in music.

Scott no one replied because your link had nothing to do with the body of your announcement.

Today Universal Music Group is a Goliath, by far the world’s biggest record company, with soaring revenues bolstered by a boom in streaming music and a market share nearly double that of its closest competitor, Sony Music Entertainment. Last year, Vivendi announced a plan to sell up to 50 percent of UMG. The sale is the talk of the music business; rumored potential buyers include Apple, Amazon and the Chinese conglomerate Alibaba. The price tag is expected to be hefty

    Its not the biggest disaster anyway and the article is over 10 years old.

new article june 11 2019 UMG covered up for over a decade

Universal Music Group Claimed No Master Recording Burned in 2008 Blaze. New Report Estimates Hundreds of Thousands Did
Explosive allegations in The New York Times Magazine claim 500,000 one-of-a-kind master recordings were destroyed in Universal Fire

 

no idea if digital copies where made martin , who cares if the Mona Lisa was lost in a fire we kept a photocopy

are these companies fit to keep or musical legacy John Colrane , Buddy Holly , Billie Holiday & 100s of other lost for future generations  

The list of destroyed  album masters  includes
It includes recordings by Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, the Andrews Sisters, the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, Lionel Hampton, Ray Charles, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Clara Ward, Sammy Davis Jr., Les Paul, Fats Domino, Big Mama Thornton, Burl Ives, the Weavers, Kitty Wells, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Bobby (Blue) Bland, B.B. King, Ike Turner, the Four Tops, Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach, Joan Baez, Neil Diamond, Sonny and Cher, the Mamas and the Papas, Joni Mitchell, Captain Beefheart, Cat Stevens, the Carpenters, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Al Green, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffett, the Eagles, Don Henley, Aerosmith, Steely Dan, Iggy Pop, Rufus and Chaka Khan, Barry White, Patti LaBelle, Yoko Ono, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Police, Sting, George Strait, Steve Earle, R.E.M., Janet Jackson, Eric B. and Rakim, New Edition, Bobby Brown, Guns N’ Roses, Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, Sonic Youth, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, Snoop Dogg, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Hole, Beck, Sheryl Crow, Tupac Shakur, Eminem, 50 Cent and the Roots

As a follow-up to Scott's original post, and for anyone who was happy to pass it off as "one of those things..." "so what, it was 10 years ago..." and thought that "nothing was really lost..."
That so many musicians are only now realising the actual extent of their losses, or even finding out about their losses for the first time, goes to show how much of a cover-up ensued.
So not only did Universal cover things up, they then trousered $150M in insurance claims.
Maybe you still don't think it's the "biggest disaster in the history of the music business." but perhaps you can now see that it's way up there with the big ones.

SOURCE

Universal is owned by Vivendi, the French media conglomerate, which has been looking to sell up to 50 percent of the record company; estimates of Universal’s value have gone as high as $33 billion. This week, Arnaud de Puyfontaine, Vivendi’s chief executive, dismissed concerns about the fire as “just noise.”

SOURCE

Martin - I too, found it amazing that 'safeties' should be stored at the same location as the original master tapes!

I imagine that UMG will be parting with some serious money to compensate all those artists whose pre-2008 output was destroyed in the fire.

They will all have their eye on lost revenue from 20th, 25th and 30th anniversay releases!