👓 The Day the Music Burned | New York Times Magazine

Read The Day the Music Burned (New York Times Magazine)

It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business — and almost nobody knew. This is the story of the 2008 Universal fire.

This brings back some memories of when I worked for several months for Iron Mountain at their Hollywood facility right next to Anawalt lumber. They had quite a large repository of music masters stored there as well as a custom nitrate film vault. At the time I remember thinking many of the same things mentioned here. I suspect that there’s an even bigger issue in film preservation, though this particular article makes it seem otherwise.

I’m surprised that the author doesn’t whip out any references to the burning of the Library at Alexandria, which may have been roughly on par in terms of cultural loss to society. It’s painfully sad that UMG covered up the devastating loss.

The artwork for the piece is really brilliant. Some great art direction here.