Universal Music Cashed In On Insurance After It Let Thousands Of Master Recordings Burn... And Didn't Give Any To Artists
from the support-artists? dept
The greatest myth the RIAA and its friends ever pulled was convincing people -- including the press and some gullible musicians -- that it represented the best interests of artists and musicians. You would think musicians would have learned not to trust the RIAA long ago, especially given that its current CEO, Mitch Glazier, got his original job at the RIAA just months after he literally secretly inserted four words into an unrelated bill that literally stole the copyright from millions of musicians. Uproar from actual musicians finally got the RIAA to back down and Congress "corrected" Glazier's dirty work. Glazier's been at the RIAA ever since, and if you think the RIAA has artist's interests in mind, you've not been paying attention.
A bunch of musicians are now suing the RIAA's largest member, Universal Music, for yet another way it profited off their works and didn't share the windfall. The story is kind of crazy all around. Last week, the NY Times Magazine had an incredible long read about a massive fire at Universal Studios in 2008 that literally wiped out hundreds of thousands of master recordings. Even though Universal Studios and Universal Music Group are two totally separate companies these days, apparently UMG stored its archives on the Universal Studios lot, even years after the two had been split apart.
As the NY Times details, partly because of this split, nearly all of the media coverage skipped over the fact that a warehouse housing hundreds of thousands of original recordings was wiped out -- and the only reporter who did mention it, Deadline.com's Nikki Finke, later posted a correction, saying that, according to Universal Music, "there was little lost from UMG's vault." Universal Music was even more explicit in talking to Billboard saying: "We had no loss thankfully."
However, as the NY Times is now reporting, that was a blatant coverup by Universal Music, which lost a ton of old masters.
The scope of this calamity is laid out in litigation and company documents, thousands of pages of depositions and internal UMG files that I obtained while researching this article. UMG’s accounting of its losses, detailed in a March 2009 document marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” put the number of “assets destroyed” at 118,230. Randy Aronson considers that estimate low: The real number, he surmises, was “in the 175,000 range.” If you extrapolate from either figure, tallying songs on album and singles masters, the number of destroyed recordings stretches into the hundreds of thousands. In another confidential report, issued later in 2009, UMG asserted that “an estimated 500K song titles” were lost.
A lot of classic recordings went up in smoke:
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. The tape masters for Billie Holiday’s Decca catalog were most likely lost in total. The Decca masters also included recordings by such greats as Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five and 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’ “Rock Around the Clock,” Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats’ “Rocket 88,” Bo Diddley’s “Bo Diddley/I’m A Man,” Etta James’s “At Last,” the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie” and the Impressions’ “People Get Ready.”
And there's more. The NY Times lists many, many more, but that quote above should already give you a sense. And even as Universal was telling the public that nothing at all was lost, the internal assessment was quite different:
The vault fire was not, as UMG suggested, a minor mishap, a matter of a few tapes stuck in a musty warehouse. It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business. UMG’s internal assessment of the event stands in contrast to its public statements. In a document prepared for a March 2009 “Vault Loss Meeting,” the company described the damage in apocalyptic terms. “The West Coast Vault perished, in its entirety,” the document read. “Lost in the fire was, undoubtedly, a huge musical heritage.”
And while some might argue that losing the masters is not losing the overall song, since other recordings exist -- losing the masters is, in fact, a big big deal that can have a huge impact. As the Times piece explains, the master is the key to the recording, especially in an era of lossy compressed copies zipping around the internet. If you ever want to do anything else with a song, you go back to the master.
The remedy is straightforward: You go back to the master. This is one reason that rereleases of classic albums are promoted as having been painstakingly remastered from the original tapes. It’s why consumers of new technologies, like CDs in the 1980s, are eager to hear familiar music properly recaptured for the format. Right now, sound-savvy consumers are taking the next leap forward into high-resolution audio, which can deliver streaming music of unprecedented depth and detail. But you can’t simply up-convert existing digital files to higher resolution. You have to return to the master and recapture it at a higher bit rate.
One person in the article quips that it's like the difference between an original painting and a photograph of that painting. They're not the same.
Separately, many of the destroyed tapes contained unreleased music, for which there was no backup. Those songs will never be heard again.
And Universal hid from the public that tons of these were completely wiped out. When I originally saw the story, I thought it might be worth writing up, to note the questions around archiving and preserving historical content (and whether or not the record labels are really the best custodians of our history). Because the NY Times piece touches on that a lot. But as the details have come out, the story is much more nefarious, and UMG looks worse and worse.
First, as evident in the quotes given to the news sources mentioned above, UMG deliberately tried to suppress the story:
In an email sent to UMG executives and P.R. staff members on June 3, 2008, Peter LoFrumento, the company’s spokesman, reported on efforts to downplay the story, attaching articles from The New York Times, The New York Daily News and The Los Angeles Times that reflected UMG’s account of events. The officials copied on the email included Zach Horowitz, UMG’s president and chief operating officer. Horowitz, who has since left the company, declined to comment for this article.
“We stuck to the script about physical backups and digital copies,” LoFrumento wrote in the email. The company, he claimed, had steered Jon Healey, a Los Angeles Times writer, toward a more favorable view: “We were able to turn Healey around on his L.A. Times editorial so it’s not a reprimand on what we didn’t do, but more of a pat on the back for what we did.” That editorial, published in the paper’s June 3 edition, offered comforting news: “At this point, it appears that the fire consumed no irreplaceable master recordings, just copies.”
While some other reports mentioned masters that were lost, they highlighted "obscure artists from the 1940s and 1950s." A key source for the NY Times piece, who was in charge of UMG's archives for many years, says that the day after the fire, a top UMG exec asked him specifically for names of artists "nobody would recognize." This was a coverup from day one.
The company also lied through its teeth to claim that it had backups of nearly everything. It did not.
The claim about digital backups, which was reported by other news outlets, also seems to have been misleading. It is true that UMG’s vault-operations department had begun a digitization initiative, known as the Preservation Project, in late 2004. But company documents, and testimony given by UMG officials in legal proceedings, make clear that the project was modest; records show that at the time of the fire approximately 12,000 tapes, mostly analog multitracks visibly at risk of deterioration, had been transferred to digital storage formats. All of those originals and digital copies were stored in a separate facility in Pennsylvania; they were not the items at issue in the fire. The company’s sweeping assurance that “the music” had been digitized appears to have been pure spin. “The company knew that there would be shock and outrage if people found out the real story,” Aronson says. “They did an outstanding job of keeping it quiet. It’s a secret I’m ashamed to have been a part of.”
Why was UMG so deliberately misleading? First, as the article goes into detail to explain, these recordings were potentially worth a ton to artists themselves. They would be the basis for any future re-issues and re-mastered works, which can be big moneymakers for some artists. Second, tons of the artists signed to UMG would be fucking pissed off to find out that their masters had been lost. Third, and most importantly, UMG decided to cash in on the loss -- and not tell the artists about it.
First, it sued its landlord and former partner company, Universal Studios. The two companies settled for an undisclosed sum. None of that went to artists. Then, there was the insurance. All in all, according to the lawsuit filed on Friday, Universal Music in its fight with Universal Studios and various insurance companies valued the losses at $150 million. Remember the "nothing was lost" quotes above? Behind the scenes, UMG was saying it lost $150 million, and asking others to pay for it. And you know who got none of that and likely didn't even know their masters had been destroyed? The artists. From the complaint:
UMG did not speak up immediately or even ever inform its recording artists that the Master Recordings embodying their musical works were destroyed. In fact, UMG concealed the loss with false public statements such as that “we only lost a small number of tapes and other material by obscure artists from the 1940s and 50s.” To this day, UMG has failed to inform Plaintiffs that their Master Recordings were destroyed in the Fire.
Yet, even as it kept Plaintiffs in the dark and misrepresented the extent of the losses, UMG successfully pursued litigation and insurance claims which it reportedly valued at $150 million to recoup the value of the Master Recordings. UMG concealed its massive recovery from Plaintiffs, apparently hoping it could keep it all to itself by burying the truth in sealed court filings and a confidential settlement agreement. Most importantly, UMG did not share any of its recovery with Plaintiffs, the artists whose life works were destroyed in the Fire—even though, by the terms of their recording contracts, Plaintiffs are entitled to 50% of those proceeds and payments.
The lawsuit was officially filed on behalf of Soundgarden, the Tupac Shakur estate, the Tom Petty estate, Hole, and Steve Earle -- and they're seeking to turn it into a class action lawsuit.
And while UMG's response to the NYT's article was a promise to be transparent, the lawsuit claims the company has been anything but:
In fact, to this day, UMG has not informed Plaintiffs that any Master Recordings embodying musical works owned by them were destroyed in the fire, and has refused to disclose or account to Plaintiffs for settlement proceeds and insurance payments received by UMG for the loss of the Master Recordings. UMG’s provided pretextual, incomplete or materially false and misleading explanations for the damages caused by the Fire and money received by it thereafter served only to cover up its misconduct. UMG’s breaches are also continuing violations in which UMG repeatedly issues royalty statements that do not identify any revenues shared or payments made to Plaintiffs or members of the class as a result of funds received by UMG as a result of its monetization of the Master Recordings.
So, once again, whenever the RIAA, its employees and friends put themselves out there as supporting "artists" maybe bring up this one example, of where it destroyed important works of art and deliberately lied about it publicly for years, while secretly collecting millions of dollars and not giving the artists their share.
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Filed Under: archives, artists, copyright, fire, hole, insurance, master recordings, payments, soundgarden, tom petty, tupac shakur
Companies: umg, universal music group, universal studios
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Right
Oh hey, they were never fighting for the Artists. Just the Rightsholders, eh?
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Why would they?
These funds had nothing to do with a sale, or performance, or other licensing of an artists work, therefore they are owed nothing.
The bigger problem for them is that there are no more masters for them to up-scale, re-mix, or otherwise tweak into new copywrong-extending "Limited Issues".
They will soon attempt to sue the world under ISDS for the TRILLIONS in "Lost Sales and Profits" from that loss.
Let the whining commence...
/sarc (I think...)
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Re: Why would they?
Maybe you meant IRDS (Investor Reality Dispute Settlement) instead of ISDS. Their problem isn't with the state, it's with reality.
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Re: Why would they?
It's in the filing.
6.
Plaintiffs bring this class action on behalf of themselves and all
similarly situated recording artists, and their heirs, successors or assigns, to recover (1) their contractual entitlement to 50% of any settlement proceeds and insurance payments received by UMG for the loss of the Master Recordings, and (2) 50% of any remaining loss of value not compensated by such settlement proceeds and insurance payments.
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Re: Re: Why would they?
I look forward to their attempts to weasel out of paying anything(like always), I imagine by trying to claim that since they can't know for sure which masters were destroyed it would be unreasonable and unfair for them to pay out to anyone.
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Re: Re: Re: Why would they?
There is a way round that, play us the master recording or pay us.
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Not to be pedantic, but the saying goes "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled". (I guess that was pedantic.)
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Re:
Not to be pedantic, but the saying goes "que la plus belle des ruses du Diable est de vous persuader qu’il n’existe pas!" and it depends on the particular translation of Baudelaire what the English phrase ends up as.
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Re:
Not to be pedantic, but I wrote what I wrote on purpose. It's paraphrasing the famous saying to make it fit here.
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But aren't the master tapes the sole property of the record company that signed the artist, and isn't this why they can get away with releasing "greatest hits" collections from artists who have not just parted ways with the company, but denounced their former label as well as their old music produced under it?
Doesn't everyone realize that the recording industry is a business, and like any business, it's all about engaging in a cold, hard cash grab. In this case, one that revolves around getting gullible people to sign contracts that basically strips them of everything they thought was rightfully theirs while at the same time burdening them with expenses and duties that in any sane world would be the responsibility of the company that employs them.
There are thankfully other outlets today for creators to find an audience in the internet age, but back then they had little choice but to literally sign their souls away to the Devil for the crapshoot of stardom, and they were fools if they didn't understand the future repercussions of what they were doing.
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"rightfully theirs"? Techdirt believes works belong to publiic!
You are confused, AC. Nobody owns art or music. At least not Masnick / Techdirt / piratey fanboys.
As I note below, Masnick gets into that tangle too: having to defend some vague "artists rights" because he absolutely hates copyright and UMG.
Wish you guys would figure out your position and stick with it!
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"embodying musical works owned by them"? But nobody "owns" music
"life works were destroyed"? -- NO, only the media.
From that, this suit is clearly brought by Copyright Maximalists claiming a supposed loss of intangibles to get some tangibles.
"UMG did not speak up immediately or even ever inform its recording artist..." It was in all the papers and on teh internets. Even I knew about it.
"jazz greats" -- Ha, ha! Good one. I don't see a name that I miss, let alone that everyone who wants hasn't a copy already.
By the way, your implication that UMG had duty to preserve those is admission that archiving isn't free, and that Copyright owners are justified in continuing income -- more or less in Perpetuity if you consider this a loss beyond the physical.
"Let ... Burn"? and "where it destroyed important works of art and deliberately lied about it publicly"? Prove that. You're getting fairly near libel there and your track record ain't great.
What exactly is your point here? Trying to innuendo that UMG is cheating dead artists on works that you want in the public domain so they wouldn't get a cent?
As usual, you're only attacking an old enemy, and if have to for once "support copyright" as above you'll stoop even that low.
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Re: "embodying musical works owned by them"? But nobody "owns" m
Don't you get tired of saying the same thing over and over and over again, knowing that every comment you make will get torn to shreds by things called.... wait for it.... facts!!
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Re: Re: "embodying musical works owned by them"? But n
Just a guess, but maybe he doesn't care about this site's 'regulars' who repeatedly flag his comments so they won't have to see them anymore. Except to troll them, of course. And someone who still remembers a particular comment he made many years ago out of the dozens he posts daily is probably not someone playing with a full deck.
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Re: "embodying musical works owned by them"? But nobody "owns" m
"What exactly is your point here?" WTF is wrong with you? I know you crave this but crawl in a hole and rot. Got a woody yet?
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Sue them for everything
This is the real enemy for musicians, not piracy, not Youtube, not insert-whatever-here. The heads of the company take ALL the money and then complain that they don't make enough money. Just end it. Burn them down.
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Re: Sue them for everything
They've already done that!
Masnick is blaming UMG for losses while trying to claim the works were all public domain, anyway.
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Re: Re: Sue them for everything
Where does he even mention public domain in relation to this post? I don't see it mentioned anywhere. Did I miss it? Or are you making stuff up?
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Re: Re: Re: Sue them for everything
"Or are you making stuff up?"
Bingo. The articles where his favoured corporations have literally stolen from people get even more hyperbole than the ones where people suggest that giving customer what they want to pay for is a good business model. The fact that he chooses to lie about things that people have just read in the article is usually a giveaway as to the desperation.
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Re: Re: Re: Sue them for everything
"Where does he even mention public domain in relation to this post? I don't see it mentioned anywhere. Did I miss it? Or are you making stuff up?"
Baghdad Bob/Jhon Smith is, as usual, making shit up as he goes because if he doesn't put up a straw man to knock down he has no argument.
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Re: Re: Sue them for everything
You, sir, are no Steve Jobs. There is no reality distortion field that extends past you and your posts. Everyone else can see the disconnect between what you say has happened and what actually happened, and was documented (just above your statement).
That said, all works WILL be in the public domain eventually; it's just a matter of time. Copyright is supposed to grant a limited monopoly to foster creativity. It'd be great if the original recordings were to last until they were in the public domain, and then be properly duplicated in such a way as the public domain could enjoy them.
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Re: Re: Re: Sue them for everything
"It'd be great if the original recordings were to last until they were in the public domain, and then be properly duplicated in such a way as the public domain could enjoy them."
It's actually in the interest of the copyright holder to torch the masters right before the recording hits public domain. Old stuff is at best a competitor to new stuff. If you can't put it in the disney vault, just apply the torch instead.
Not that I'm suggesting that's what happened in the OP - which apparently referred to master's still under copyright.
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Re: Why you still here bro
That’s fucking sad even by an ignorant motherfuckers standards.
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Re: Re:
There once was an out_of_the_blue
Who hated the process of due
Each fire he'd made
Was DMCAed
And shoved up his ass with a screw
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Re: Re: Sue them for everything
"Burn them down.
They've already done that!
Masnick is blaming UMG for losses while trying to claim the works were all public domain, anyway."
Really, crawl in a hole and rot. Your children will be grateful.
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as big a tragedy as this is, as far as i'm concerned, those artists that have lost out, along with their families, fucking good job, serves them right!
equally, as much as i think the labels screw as many as often as possible, so do artists and so do their families! the only good that comes from both the labels and the artists and their families is all taken by them and nothing, absolutely nothing ever comes to the public! this is nothing but pure greed and couldn't, in my opinion, have happened to a better bunch of cunts anywhere on the Planet!!
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Re:
Erm... what was taken from the public here, except by the labels?
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RIAA "represented the best interests of artists and musicians"
I never believed that.
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Re: RIAA "represented the best interests of artists and musician
Indeed. Price and George Michael spent most of the 90s fighting against bad contracts they were given in the 80s... Yet we're all meant to just trust that they have the interests of indie artists that will never sell even close to what they did at heart.
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Re: RIAA "represented the best interests of artists and musician
It's all in how you interpret it. It's like the "all you can eat for a dollar" buffet - you take one bite and they take away your plate. "That's all you can eat for a dollar."
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Public Domian...SOLVED..
How much of this would have/could have, been dropped tot he public Domain? But they were to LAZY to dig the stuff out, and probably WANTED to get a few things DONE, before re-releasing
NEW masters Collections of Limited Edition, only 100 Published..recordings..
Whats fun is understanding HOW, the recordings Are/were done..
They could Just record the original artist and then Add/Dub Other things into the Final.
They could record the Whole band..Which means mistakes are on the recording.
They could record EACH individual and then Have full control over all the sound and every part.. the only copies left are already put together and you cant separate that(EASILY).
Another THINK! on this is What does the recording industry OWN.? The original or the Copies? And SOME artists OWN the Original..(they did their own productions)
I said long ago, the subject of RE-MASTERING..Updating the formats.. Which is a HUGE job. and the old masters are probably on Disk or Tape. and the machines to play them on is so old there isnt any place to get/make one FOR CHEAP..
New contract dispute.
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True... from a certain point of view
The greatest myth the RIAA and its friends ever pulled was convincing people -- including the press and some gullible musicians -- that it represented the best interests of artists and musicians
The RIAA supports and represents the best interest of artists and musicians much in the same way that a cattle rancher does for their livestock. They will care for them and try to keep them healthy, but it's entirely for the rancher's sake, and if they need to sell off a few to make up for a profit shortfall it will be done with not a moment of hesitation, since after all the cattle are there for the rancher, not themselves.
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What have I been saying for more than two decades? ...yep, the RIAA labels are the biggest pirates around (rivaled only by the MPAA studios).
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RIAA... huh?
Other than the fact that UMG is an RIAA member, what on earth does this travesty to do with them?
The entire first paragraph of this article is just transparent axe-grinding that has bupkis to do with the actual story.
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Re: RIAA... huh?
A bunch of musicians are now suing the RIAA's largest member, Universal Music, for yet another way it profited off their works and didn't share the windfall.
Other than that part, and the bit about how the RIAA lies and tries to pretend that they support musicians, which actions like this rather nicely highlight is not the case given it's largest member just tried(and has so far succeeded in) screwing over a bunch of them?
Now, if the RIAA were to issue a public statement decrying this blatant attempt at screwing over the musicians that it cares so very much for, then lumping UMG's actions in with them might be unfair, but until then it seems entirely justified to point out that the biggest member of the organization that likes to pretend it supports musicians just pulled a very anti-musician move.
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Re: Re: RIAA... huh?
I think the "lumping in" comes with the RIAA CEO and the move he pulled to essentially take any hope of rights from all the artists, which would have been another massive screwing over of artists while lying about it had it not been revoked. The RIAA exists because of it's clients with the same mindset, the biggest of which is Universal. Not exactly much of a reach to include them, particularly since they are doing absolutely nothing to back up the artists.
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Holy fuck, this sounds like fraud.
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Re:
Indeed it is. However, defrauding the public, the government, or even the courts rarely lands a corporate executive in jail. Very few things nowadays will. If they lied to their investors about the extent of the loses, they committed one of the most unforgivable sins of all...investor fraud. The sad truth is that our judicial system is highly stratified by "class". And the only class above the executives of mega-conglomerates is their investors. That's the distinction between the Bernie Madoff's or Kenneth Lay's and the Gary Cohn's.
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Huh... and they told us how the pirates were stealing millions from them... while they were robbing them blind.
How sad it might be that the only quality copies of some of this music is in the libraries of evil evil pirates (read as fans) who worked hard to have lossless copies that often were unavailable at any price.
We kept your most precious creations in a single place, as single copies... I guess the money they saved on not maintaining multiple backups is now biting the shareholders who got an extra nickel in the ass.
Anyone want to comment on how history keeps repeating?
Films on silver nitrate left to rot, some films lost forever.
Handwritten manuscripts tossed into a corner left to rot.
They tell us how important these things are, demand everyone else pay the price to protect the IP, but once again they are unwilling to protect it themselves b/c it might hurt the bottom line. They lied about getting paid, perhaps its time to stop trusting anything they say.
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Hollywood teaches us that images have infinite quality and you can zoom in and enhance as much as needed for the plot. I guess sound recordings play by different rules.
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Sue the fire for copyright infringement.
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The insurance paid out? I figured there would be some sort of preexisting conditions there.
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This music, these master tapes lost and subsequent surviving masters in the hands of UMG and other industry. is a NATIONAL TREASURE and now knowing the depth and width and height of this tragic loss, CONGRESS MUST STEP IN TO SAFEGUARD THIS TREASURE OF MUSIC that obviously is too massive a job of safeguarding that these companies can't be entrusted with. It will be a terrible disregard if Congress doesn't get involved.
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In that UMG immediately ran the cover up version of what really happened, its not hard to suppose or even suspect that in protecting such a massive archive of original music, the endless flow of expense pouring out of the company like a nightmarish busted underwater oil pipe was something worth capping sadly enough plus the insurance premiums could be recouperated by one single nefarious act is not too hard to believe as a plausible explanation for what might have happened. There must be inspection records by fire marshalls locally that directly state the safe environment those masters were warehoused in. A decade later and where are the surviving heritage of archives now? Has this institution done anything to. expand measures to safeguard America's music? SOMEONE NEEDS TO BRING DOWN THE HAMMER AND MAKE SURE THIS NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.
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why is the RIAA even mentioned in this article? This has no more to do with the RIAA than any other industry body UMG is a part of.
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