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The Day the Music Burned

nytimes.com

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Re: The Day the Music Burned

#21

Post by [deleted] »

mrbbk wrote: post #18
easymodex wrote: post #7

I'd actually say the biggest disaster in history of music is what.cd being shut down. They had the largest collection of hard to find music, meticulously curated and in lossless formats. I doubt there will ever be such a complete collection and it was devastating to see it get killed like that.

I normally don't bother posting replies to comments on here, but I have to point out that this is an unbelievably bizarre and wrongheaded interpretation of the scale and depth of this disaster. Curated collections of lossless streaming music are possible to recreate. Master tapes can NEVER BE RECREATED. Comparing the loss of a collection of reproducible fungible audio files with analog magnetic tape is misinformed at…

[deleted]

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#22

Post by daurnimator »

easymodex wrote: post #7

I'd actually say the biggest disaster in history of music is what.cd being shut down. They had the largest collection of hard to find music, meticulously curated and in lossless formats. I doubt there will ever be such a complete collection and it was devastating to see it get killed like that.

IMO the shutdown of Oink's pink palace was much worse than what.cd. What.cd was the bits of OiNK that people had bothered to archive...

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#23

Post by pseudolus »

Over the years the film industry has suffered enormous losses as well, in part because early movies used nitrocellulose based film stock which is highly flammable and susceptible to spontaneous combustion. The 1937 Fox vault fire is one of many examples of film loss that has continued to the present [0]. Sadly, the existence of a large number of silent movies is only known through reviews, film posters and past recollections of participants. Similarly, a great deal of video has been discarded, lost or reused. If I recall correctly some of the earliest Dr. Who episodes have been lost because the media on which they were recorded was reused.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#24

Post by dredmorbius »

andrelaszlo wrote: post #20
WrathOfJay wrote: post #4

That is a heroically long article of which all I don't really have time to read, unfortunately. But it seems to me that these companies have an ethical responsibility to ensure that this important art is not lost forever, even if they technically own it and could ensure it never sees the light of day. What a loss.

Just out of curiosity, would you have preferred reading it on paper? Long reads on screens are not so fun imo.

Printed to PDF the piece runs 36 pages, about 12,000 words, or roughly an hour's read.

It is long.

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#25

Post by randomsearch »

mrbbk wrote: post #18
easymodex wrote: post #7

I'd actually say the biggest disaster in history of music is what.cd being shut down. They had the largest collection of hard to find music, meticulously curated and in lossless formats. I doubt there will ever be such a complete collection and it was devastating to see it get killed like that.

I normally don't bother posting replies to comments on here, but I have to point out that this is an unbelievably bizarre and wrongheaded interpretation of the scale and depth of this disaster. Curated collections of lossless streaming music are possible to recreate. Master tapes can NEVER BE RECREATED. Comparing the loss of a collection of reproducible fungible audio files with analog magnetic tape is misinformed at…

Steelmanning, if you’re certain you’re correct then you should assume the OP was misinformed, in which case why not kindly explain why without being aggressive? Educate us rather than attack us, please!

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#26

Post by CaptainZapp »

pseudolus wrote: post #23

Over the years the film industry has suffered enormous losses as well, in part because early movies used nitrocellulose based film stock which is highly flammable and susceptible to spontaneous combustion. The 1937 Fox vault fire is one of many examples of film loss that has continued to the present [0]. Sadly, the existence of a large number of silent movies is only known through reviews, film posters and past recol…

The management of one of the most impressive modernist buildings in Prague[1] thought it's a good idea to store such films in the basement with rather devastating consequences.

If you're only half of a modern art buff I strongly recommend a visit when you're in Prague.

[1] https://news.expats.cz/art/the-story-of-veletrzni-palace/

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#27

Post by imtyler »

mrbbk wrote: post #18
easymodex wrote: post #7

I'd actually say the biggest disaster in history of music is what.cd being shut down. They had the largest collection of hard to find music, meticulously curated and in lossless formats. I doubt there will ever be such a complete collection and it was devastating to see it get killed like that.

I normally don't bother posting replies to comments on here, but I have to point out that this is an unbelievably bizarre and wrongheaded interpretation of the scale and depth of this disaster. Curated collections of lossless streaming music are possible to recreate. Master tapes can NEVER BE RECREATED. Comparing the loss of a collection of reproducible fungible audio files with analog magnetic tape is misinformed at…

I understand your point, but what good are master tapes if they're not available to be heard? I think you could argue that destroying a musical distribution network has the same effect as destroying music: it's no longer available to be consumed.

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#28

Post by ukyrgf »

daurnimator wrote: post #22
easymodex wrote: post #7

I'd actually say the biggest disaster in history of music is what.cd being shut down. They had the largest collection of hard to find music, meticulously curated and in lossless formats. I doubt there will ever be such a complete collection and it was devastating to see it get killed like that.

IMO the shutdown of Oink's pink palace was much worse than what.cd. What.cd was the bits of OiNK that people had bothered to archive...

This was true of Waffles. They were just torrent sites. People used them, musicians approved, leaks happened, and everything else that pirates do went down there. What.CD, however, became a place that was trying to build an archive of every piece of recorded music ever created. If a version of an album wasn't on there, a bounty was created that was often compelling enough that people would spend time and money hunting down a copy of it.

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#29

Post by xoa »

xamuel wrote: post #16
xoa wrote: post #6

Similar losses, though less dramatic and less all at once, have plagued the software industry too and in particular video games. An enormous amount of source code and assets for stuff made in the 80s and 90s in particular has been lost for good, which makes it far more difficult to preserve and update them. If there is some tiny silver lining possible out of these modern Library of Alexandria permanent destruction of…

>Back when copyright was purely a product of the written word the ultimate master information was also by definition included in every copy. Not strictly true. There is a difference between a copy of a Bach concerto and the original score in Bach's own handwriting, even if the copy captures all the notes perfectly. Original manuscripts can contain scratched-out parts which are nevertheless of great interest to schola…

I actually did consider things like author's notes and background material, but I stand by that not being the same as what you're describing anymore then I'd consider preserving a software project to also have to include every mailing list any dev posted to or all communications or whatever. Masters, source code/raw assets, and so forth are still final products produced from a development process, even if technical necessity then dictates they are then "compiled" into something targeting specific mediums.

Author notes, drafts, and original manuscripts, just like processes around music/movie/software production, can be interesting in their own right, but I don't think it's in the same bucket or has the same cultural implications.

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#30

Post by btown »

jacquesm wrote: post #14
logifail wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wasn't this material protected in, at least, a fireproof area, or, better, in some salt cave in the Utah desert? ...because the music business is far more interested in attempting to prevent the unauthorised copying of their material, than in preserving material for the long term?

> because the music business is far more interested in attempting to prevent the unauthorised copying of their material, than in preserving material for the long term? I guess burning it is the ultimate form of copy protection.

You wouldn’t download a fire.
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