Fire destroyed precious Masters

How many reissues have been made from the ‘master tapes’ since 2008?
 
First of all Universal bought out Polygram in the Early 2000's. The Bulk of Polygrams body of work from the 1970's - Time of sale in 2002 or so (Mercury/MCA/Polydor/Island/Def Jam etc) the masters were located in Edison, NJ at the Polygram Tape Facility where my buddy worked. Polygram's home office was ALWAYS in NYC....never California. The only Major Old School Labels who's home offices are located in California are Capitol, Warner Brothers, Elektra/Asylum, Geffen from the old days. Polygram/Atlantic/Columbia/Sony are located in New York. All I do is work with people in the music industry (Record Execs/Producers/Engineers/Program Directors etc). NOBODY has ever even brought this up as "News" worth mentioning.
 
Mikey has reported on the tragedy that was the Universal fire. This is from his review of Gil Evan's Out of the Cool:

https://www.analogplanet.com/content/gil-evanss-out-cool-crapper

"The review claims the record was mastered from "original tapes". Well guess what? There IS NO ORIGINAL TAPE! It was incinerated in the spring 2008 Universal Studios fire along with thousands of other master tapes. Universal at first denied anything of importance was lost, but like this "original tape" reissue, that was bullshit! Enough bullshit!"

"Many masters were lost, but much was also saved, ironically because they were out being re-mastered, many for vinyl reissues. Analogue Productions announced the Impulse! series in 2009 by which time many of the tapes had already been pulled and were off the lot—at least that's what I have been told.
Also it's my understanding that a great deal of it had been moved but UMG is not forthcoming with what was lost and what was saved.
It's also fairly common knowledge that many Impulse! masters 'went missing' years ago and much of what's been issued on CD is from copies of masters, some procured from the U.K. and other overseas sources. At some point soon I will post pictures of the UMG Berliner facility's tape vaults that I took when I visited some years ago. How many years? I can't remember off the top of my brain..."
 
If it isn't digitized and copies kept in multiple locations there is no totally fire safe location for audio or video content. All analog content is at risk of fire, flood or just age deterioration over time.

I am just guessing that the reason this isn't/wasn't a bigger deal is that 99.9% of the population could not care less about whether the content they hear is derived from a master whether analog or digital. Also, 98% of those who stream or purchase will never think about acquiring any of that lost content. Universal's bottom line isn't going to be materially impacted with the loss of those "masters". They just hoped any uproar would fade away.

I know I sound cynical but in another decade or at most another generation those artists will be as irrelevant as the big acts from the '30's and '40's. For those who view the loss from a historical perspective it is a huge loss. For almost everyone else it is irrelevant.
 
Terrible read.

"Yet the news has never reached the broader public. In part, this represents a triumph of crisis management." Cynicism at its best.

Some interesting comments on the NYT page:

"Corporations are in the business of making profits. They are ill-suited to the task of preserving. Preservation should be left to institutions such as libraries and national archives."

That might be true. At least for the remaining rest of the masters.
 
Does the distruction of masters like this impact MQA official recordings?... or is MQA processing derived from some other type of archive?

Edit:
I realize that MQA processing is based on recording engineers' historic archived data and I'm wondering if those notes and documents that MQA relies upon are also physically stored alongside the actual master music recordings of either vinyl or tape or both?
 
MikeCh said:
Does the distruction of masters like this impact MQA official recordings?... or is MQA processing derived from some other type of archive?
Click to expand...

I don't think that there are any MQA official recordings. MQA is a recent technology that is supposed to be applied to existing Master recordings (that excludes damaged or burned masters).
 
nicoff said:
I don't think that there are any MQA official recordings. MQA is a recent technology that is supposed to be applied to existing Master recordings (that excludes damaged or burned masters).
Click to expand...

Please see my edit above
 
nicoff said:
I don't think that there are any MQA official recordings. MQA is a recent technology that is supposed to be applied to existing Master recordings (that excludes damaged or burned masters).
Click to expand...

I don't want to debate semantics regarding "official" but there are many new releases every week that are available in MQA. It is not just being applied to older recordings. I would hope that newer recordings can be obtained in either non-MQA and MQA versions. This might alleviate the sky is falling mentality of the anti-MQA crowd.
 
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