published a story in June that alleged over half-a-million recordings, including irreplaceable master tapes and troves of unreleased recordings, had been lost.
Since the report, UMG has continued to dispute the extent of the damage, though CEO Lucian Grainge told employeesto be transparent with any artist asking about the state of their recordings. Since then, UMG’s chief archivist, Pat Kraus, has been leading an initiative to process requests from artists, and on Wednesday — prior to the filing of the motion to dismiss — Kraus issued an internal memo that included fairly promising numbers.
In the memo, Kraus claimed that his UMG team had fielded requests from about 275 artists and reviewed 26,663 individual assets covering 30 artists. “Of those assets,” Kraus said, “We believe we’ve identified 424 that could be missing or lost due to the fire, with audio assets accounting for 349 of them. Our data suggests that 22 of those could be ‘original masters’ which are associated with 5 artists.
UMG did not specify which artists or recordings had been covered in the search so far. King, however, did share a list of 118 artists who had been in touch with him since the class action was filed and were also seeking information about recordings that might have been destroyed. The list includes Blink-182, the Eagles, Steely Dan, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Roseanne Cash, T. Bone Burnett, Guns ’N Roses, the Eagles, Bo Diddley, Iggy Pop, Nirvana, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Smash Mouth, Will Smith, Will.
Of those artists, King says UMG only provided information regarding the status of recordings belonging to one, Hole. King says UMG claimed that no Hole recordings were destroyed in the 2008 fire, but when he and the band asked for proof in the form of documents that would’ve been filed when UMG was pursuing litigation and insurance claims, the label declined to hand them over.
“um we shouldn’t be held. You know. Responsible for lost art and lying. Not on us”. Or something