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The Day the Music Burned

nytimes.com

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Re: The Day the Music Burned

#91

Post by dehrmann »

bogomipz wrote: post #57
dehrmann wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be blunt, there's a lot of it and it's not actually that valuable. We've had CDs for 30+ years. If there's an album UMG thought it'd be worth digitizing, remastering, and reselling, they'd have done it by now. Humanity generates information (works of art included) faster than it can be reliably archived, and as that information ages and no one is interested in it, it becomes less relevant. Maybe it's a bit nihilis…

>"To be blunt, there's a lot of it and it's not actually that valuable. We've had CDs for 30+ years. If there's an album UMG thought it'd be worth digitizing, remastering, and reselling, they'd have done it by now." This is not even remotely true. Albums are re-issued and re-released all the time. Often times there will a renewed interest in an artist or their work from a death, some current artist sighting them as a…

> Albums are re-issued and re-released all the time.

This is a tactic to stay on the charts and drum-up sales.

On the top-50 albums right now, many of which have spent YEARS on the chart,

- Queen: Greatest Hits I II & III: The Platinum Collection

- Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band: Greatest Hits

- Sounds Of Summer: The Very Best Of The Beach Boys

- Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

- Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon

https://www.billboard.com/charts/top-album-sales

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#92

Post by LocalH »

iicc wrote: post #43
xoa wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I understand your point, but what good are master tapes if they're not available to be heard? But they might be. The article itself gave examples of music long ignored that was rediscovered and became of interest, at which point the company could go to its archive and digitize the masters again with the latest tech. They did keep it archived in the first place for a reason after all. Alternatively with advancing te…

>music long ignored that was rediscovered and became of interest, at which point the company could go to its archive and digitize the masters again with the latest tech. For anyone interested check out the part-isolated "mogg" files from the Rockband games.

Harmonix doesn't really like people getting those stems out of the games, though (it can affect their ability to license music going forward). I'm part of the GH community, and when RB4 was ripped, HMX got pissed. Admittedly, the people downloading the rips largely didn't care about analyzing the music, they just wanted to play RB4 songs for free, so I totally understand why they'd be pissed.

They care far less about the stems they put out in the pre-RB days, in GH1/2/80s. But they were mostly covers in the first place (except for the bonus songs, and a small handful of main setlist songs).

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#93

Post by LocalH »

jacquesm wrote: post #3
i_am_nomad wrote: post #2

Perhaps this will serve the same purpose fire does in a large, old-growth forest.

I really don't see the analogy between the burning up of a library full of unique material and a forest fire. If you felt that the library of Alexandria burning down made life better somehow for those that came after then I'm all ears.

I can see it from the perspective of "well, now others can have that same joy and accomplishment of rediscovery", which is a sort of a silver lining, I guess. But I agree, such losses have far more negatives than positives.

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#94

Post by bogomipz »

dehrmann wrote: post #91
bogomipz wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"To be blunt, there's a lot of it and it's not actually that valuable. We've had CDs for 30+ years. If there's an album UMG thought it'd be worth digitizing, remastering, and reselling, they'd have done it by now." This is not even remotely true. Albums are re-issued and re-released all the time. Often times there will a renewed interest in an artist or their work from a death, some current artist sighting them as a…

> Albums are re-issued and re-released all the time. This is a tactic to stay on the charts and drum-up sales. On the top-50 albums right now, many of which have spent YEARS on the chart, - Queen: Greatest Hits I II & III: The Platinum Collection - Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band: Greatest Hits - Sounds Of Summer: The Very Best Of The Beach Boys - Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Pink Floyd - The Dark Side…

>"This is a tactic to stay on the charts and drum-up sales."

Uhm yes it's a business, it's called the "music business" for a reason. What's your point? To my point - Queen is there because there was just a huge biopic movie that won 4 Oscars. There is also an Elton biopic that was just released. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys had a big summer tour planned that was just cancelled. And Bob Seger is currently on tour. That's traditionally how the music business worked - artists toured to sell records in the markets they were playing in. Pink Floyd being on the charts is nothing new either. It's a constant. They have been on the top 200 for Dark Side since it was released in 1973[1]. And it spent decades on the chart before there were any reissues of it.

There is also no shortage of long tail content that sells well to diehard fans but not enough to chart. Visit Rough Trade Records in Brooklyn/London or Amoeba Records in SF or LA if you want to see just how big of a business "specialty" reissues are - most of which will never show up on any charts.

[1] https://www.billboard.com/articles/events/greatest-of-all-ti...

Re: The Day the Music Burned

#95

Post by droptablemain »

tigeba wrote: post #86
a-afterglow wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides from being able to fiddle with the multitrack myself at home, whenever I have studio sessions for my band I always ask for the stems. I remember a couple years ago while starting work on an EP at a local studio, the guy just deleted some band's sessions to make space for ours. He didn't want to give me the stems, but we never released that EP anyway. When/if we get to re-record it, I'll be sure that is clear…

If you are paying for the session its completely reasonable to ask for a copy of the session files IMHO. If you are going to tape and they want to erase it and re-use it or something I would at least negotiate dumping it to digital.

I agree completely, but notice that many engineers and/or mixers seem to believe that the session/mix data (outside of bounced stems) is their IP. Which is truly stupid when you think about it.
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