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Post by daytona600 on Jun 13, 2019 22:46:11 GMT
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.htmlToday 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
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Post by daytona600 on Jun 17, 2019 14:39:51 GMT
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
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Post by Slinger on Jun 17, 2019 15:46:00 GMT
Apologies. I.i.r.c. when I saw this post originally I'd run out of free articles on the NYT and couldn't access the article. Me being me I then promptly forgot to revisit it. I was back "in credit" with the Times today, so thanks for reminding me about it. The loss of the Chess masters alone feels like a cataclysmic event to me, and that's only a tiny fraction of what was lost in total. The lies, ignorance, and plain downright stupidity exposed in the article is mind-blowing.
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Post by mikeyb on Jun 17, 2019 16:58:21 GMT
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.
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Post by MartinT on Jun 17, 2019 17:02:38 GMT
Me too, I couldn't read the NYT article.
Although the (presumably) analogue master tapes are lost, are there good analogue or digital copies in existence for most of them?
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Post by mikeyb on Jun 17, 2019 17:05:39 GMT
Me too, I couldn't read the NYT article. Although the (presumably) analogue master tapes are lost, are there good analogue or digital copies in existence for most of them? Strange I read it no problem
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Post by MartinT on Jun 17, 2019 17:08:27 GMT
I tried to read it at work and it uses no. of IP hits, so the limit had long been reached.
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Post by The Brookmeister on Jun 17, 2019 18:23:21 GMT
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
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Post by MartinT on Jun 17, 2019 18:44:14 GMT
Scott no one replied because your link had nothing to do with the body of your announcement. I was scratching my head at that, too.
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Post by daytona600 on Jun 17, 2019 21:44:16 GMT
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
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Post by MartinT on Jun 18, 2019 5:31:55 GMT
So are there digital copies in existence, or did some music disappear as a result?
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Post by daytona600 on Jun 18, 2019 7:17:27 GMT
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
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Post by MartinT on Jun 18, 2019 7:35:54 GMT
who cares if the Mona Lisa was lost in a fire we kept a photocopy Not entirely the same thing. If they aren't, who is? Any facility storing legacy material like this is vulnerable to damage. What would happen if the British Library caught fire? It's always a risk.
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Post by daytona600 on Jun 18, 2019 7:41:54 GMT
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
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Post by Slinger on Jun 18, 2019 11:47:07 GMT
Perhaps not everyone is actually reading the article before critiquing it. Here are some of extracts which may prompt you to read further.
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Post by Slinger on Jun 24, 2019 13:30:06 GMT
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. SOURCEUniversal 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
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Post by MartinT on Jun 26, 2019 5:40:16 GMT
Sheryl Crow was on R4 this morning, saying that she had found the loss of some of her early albums shocking. She claimed that the 'safeties' (copies) of the masters had been held in the same facility. They played a bit of Tuesday Night Music Club, in my reckoning her best album, so presumably that has been lost. She asked "how can you have such an important storage facility without sprinklers?" www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48745638
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Post by SteveC on Jun 26, 2019 11:31:23 GMT
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!
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Post by Slinger on Jun 26, 2019 15:26:48 GMT
Sheryl Crow... Crow, whose biggest hits include All I Wanna Do and If It Makes You Happy, confirmed her tapes had perished, taking with them dozens of alternate takes, demos and unreleased songs. SOURCE
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Post by MikeMusic on Jun 26, 2019 16:26:36 GMT
Sheryl Crow was on R4 this morning, saying that she had found the loss of some of her early albums shocking. She claimed that the 'safeties' (copies) of the masters had been held in the same facility. She asked "how can you have such an important storage facility without sprinklers?" How can you keep "safeties" in the same bloody building !? Why didn't someone do the due diligence ? Trust no one, especially large companies and even more any in the music industry
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