Hi Jeff, Jeremy, Paul, James, Frank, and other concerned ARSC members:
Other than the righteous anger parts of my post, I think it holds a fairly good amount of information and references. Check out the reporting sources at the bottom of it, some are quite good reads.
As to ARSC: I’m not naive enough to think UMG/Vivendi wouldn’t completely stonewall us. There are lots of other ways to change and influence current corporate culture/practice vis-à-vis “audio preservation”, which are probably the two words closest to ARSC’s raison d’être. There are multiple platforms, numerous other forms of public outreach, an admittedly dysfunctional political system. What is needed here is an overall media strategy, perhaps crisis management tools (if I can go so far); and of course “blame and shame” which is frankly why I included references to Vivendi’s CSR platform and all its board members’ names. Understandably, organizations are hesitant to use this last option, but it can be effectively deployed. The skills-set for developing all these strategies are readily available within the ARSC community.
Let’s just start with obtaining an adequate (meaning full) inventory of actual loses—not UMG b.s. about what remains duplicated in substandard audio formats. Jeff is clearly not alone within ARSC in already knowing some of this important information. Understandably, ARSC members would be hesitant to use the listserv to post unpublished, unsourced UMG inventory losses, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t circulate such information through other internal channels. We know NYT’s and Jody Rosen’s findings—leaving aside a sourceless Twitter account—regarding the UMG inventory accounting to date (including the label divisions). Other claims are floating around the web. None of this approaches a coordinated demand (using many available allies) for a true, known inventory. Can we not at least put that request front and center?
Besides ARSC’s appropriate inquiry into an adequate accounting by UMG/Vivendi, the general public knows and truly cares about the artists involved. That’s a significant leverage point. People want great art protected.
Thanks, Frank, Paul and James for your storage subject posts. Here, once again, you have plainly stated a sorely needed reality check on how little it would take cost-wise to safeguard our entire heritage of 78 rpm classical music on SSD’s. Without even hitting the 1TB mark, a private individual can back up in excess of 30K tracks of classical and jazz music in safe, protected storage; also in lossless format (which is the minimum any professional archivist should accept) and without any violation of current U.S. or international copyright law. God forbid anyone would deign to abrogate the latter. So yes, of course that’s a private individual. As you’ve posted, the storage price of all this is now within almost anyone’s reach. That a corporate entity the size and wealth of UMG/Vivendi can’t responsibly manage this (contrary to their recent claims) is beyond absurd. Perhaps “Alice in Wonderland” has not yet been translated into French?
[Jeff, there’s currently a severe thunderstorm alert out for Montgomery County until 10pm, so I expected a little more rain to fall on my parade (: ]
I very much enjoy and benefit reading everyone’s posts. Hope you will continue staying involved.
Sincerely,
Alex McGehee
Jun 18, 2019, at 12:36 PM, Jeff Willens <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I don't know that this is entirely correct, as the Slim Gaillard album was remastered by Verve on the East Coast in the early 2000s. It's possible it's gone, but not likely.
>
>
> On Tue, 18 Jun 2019 14:42:54 +0000, Jeremy Smith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I’m not sure where this person is sourcing their information, but there is a recently established Twitter account documenting the individual releases supposedly lost in the fire: https://twitter.com/extinctophonics
>>
>> Jerem
>>
>>
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