Comments on Profile Post by insidious meme

If you have New York Times subscription, the original report is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html

Short of people dying, this is as depressing a read as you can find for SBAF denizens.

Shit.

That's an awful lot of eggs to keep in one basket. And one hell of a tragic loss.

Given the historic tendency of cellulose film to spontaneously ignite, you'd think that industry would be sensitive to fire risks.

As far as it doesn't touch the safe with the bills, they're good

That is truly sad.

I was just about to post this. It’s both depressing and rage-inducing that a loss like this could occur.

Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.

The Chess Label one really hurts. So much old Blues, R&B and Rock & Roll is now lost for the ages. I hope some artists sue UMG for the loss of their master tapes even if the ownership is partially shared.

Literally the first rule to audio recording is to keep a backup of your backups in different locations if you want to be 99% sure you’ll always have that material.

All my favorite Blues artists. Damn.

This is a classic tragedy. Just got an email from HDTracks. They are having a sale on UMG titles. Maybe they should call it a fire sale. Alexandria all over again. Only worse.

Whilst I know some would scream at the very idea, I think there is no excuse for not having digitised such an archive.

@cskippy - I was just reading about the family booklet that every french family has with records of important dates like marriage and births. It began because some archive in Paris burned to the ground and this was instituted as a sort of decentralized backup.

I would hope each artists has a copy of their own master tapes for similar reasons, but highly doubtful.