Universal Music Fire & Audio Fidelity Multichannel SACDs

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But most unfortunately, GENERATIONS removed from [in the case of films] the original camera negatives and the original multitracks from which the stereo masters were derived!

In the case of the films, hundreds were lost of which the only copies existed in the vaults.

The original multi-tracks are a tragic loss, but in most cases they were never going to be used again anyway.

If all we had lost in the film vault fires were the original negatives and deleted scenes but still had pristine BluRay copies of the final cuts?

That would the comparison here. Tragic, yes. Never should have happened? Obviously. Completely irresponsible on the part of Universal? Undoubtedly.

But suing that the artists are losing money over this? That’s a bit of a stretch, IMO. Let’s be real here. Who knows better than us MC fans the degree to which most of the artists couldn’t give a rat’s patootie about the multi-tracks?
 
In the case of the films, hundreds were lost of which the only copies existed in the vaults.

The original multi-tracks are a tragic loss, but in most cases they were never going to be used again anyway.

If all we had lost in the film vault fires were the original negatives and deleted scenes but still had pristine BluRay copies of the final cuts?

That would the comparison here. Tragic, yes. Never should have happened? Obviously. Completely irresponsible on the part of Universal? Undoubtedly.

But suing that the artists are losing money over this? That’s a bit of a stretch, IMO. Let’s be real here. Who knows better than us MC fans the degree to which most of the artists couldn’t give a rat’s patootie about the multi-tracks?
That just seems baffling to me that they wouldn't care, given that it's their musical creations and legacy involved. Maybe it was just all the abusive contractual agreements that musicians were/are roped into sours them on the whole scene? Mostly isn't it actually the song writers that make the most money from royalties in the music industry, besides the labels they sign to?
 
That just seems baffling to me that they wouldn't care, given that it's their musical creations and legacy involved. Maybe it was just all the abusive contractual agreements that musicians were/are roped into sours them on the whole scene? Mostly isn't it actually the song writers that make the most money from royalties in the music industry, besides the labels they sign to?

I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s just, as we have learned, many artists only want the public to hear what they consider to be the final, finished product: the mixes released decades ago. So what use are the multi-tracks if they have no plans to ever allow a remix of them?

I’m sure most of them care to the degree it contains their work. But as far as suing because they would lose money from this? So many obviously had no desire to monetize them. Certainly none of us were ever going to hear any new mixes from most of them, so what’s the loss to the public?

Paul Simon probably burned his multi-tracks years ago. :p
 
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S&G got some stereo remixes like those Byrds albums did - due to faded / worn masters.

All articles that mentioned the artists’ masters lost in the fire were free of any real facts. All articles just went through the list of artists signed to any label distributed by UNI at the time of the fire and said that these artists may have been effected, these tapes might have been lost forever and these catalogues could be goners!

I’m under the impression it was a lot of stereo masters, and not multitracks for the most part. And it does seem Chess was a total loss, big sections of A&M, while all Polygram, Motown, and other Mercury related catalogs are said to be fine.

Tom Petty’s estate says that there are a few albums that the mixed masters are missing for, but it does not appear to be fire related because the other Petty tapes were all accounted for after that fire.

So yes, a very bad fire, but not everything went up. And most all that did go up was copied to digital even if only CD quality. It remains to be seen what was stored at the Iron Mountain facility so far as more original tapes not lost.
 
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