The 'Exile on Main Street' reissue and the new "stripped down" version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 'Double Fantasy' couldn't have happened without fully intact multitrack masters.

Last year, the Beggars Banquet label unearthed the multitrack master recordings of the Cult's classic 1985 album, Love, for a planned deluxe edition. The LP was an early digital recording, and to the label's shock, one master was unplayable; the other contained only 80 percent of the album. "That's the problem with digital," says Steve Webbon, head archivist of the Beggars Group. "When it goes, it's just blank. It's gone."

Welcome to the digital nightmare. Until the 1980s, music was recorded on analog tapes that were stored in vaults and easily played back. In the digital era, that process has changed irrevocably. A new report issued by the Library of Congress calls digital formats "not inherently safe harbors of preservation," and raised red flags about how music collections are being stored. "There's a paradox," says Sam Brylawski, a former Library of Congress archivist. "We can record so easily now with digital recorders. But at the same time, the stuff is at greater risk than it used to be." Producer T Bone Burnett, who testified at a hearing on the topic, couldn't agree more: "Digital is a feeble storage medium."

Why does it matter? With the record industry battling shrinking sales, labels have been scouring their catalogs for new revenue streams: deluxe reissues, remixes and video-game and soundtrack licensing opportunities — all of which can require the multitrack masters (these contain all of a song's separate vocal and instrumental elements). For instance, this year's hit Exile on Main Street reissue, where the Rolling Stones recorded new material onto sessions from the 1970s, or the new "stripped down" version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy couldn't have happened without fully intact multitrack masters.

The great advantage of the digital medium — that it's always evolving — is also its downfall. Modern computers aren't always compatible with old formats. "Say you have a Word file on an old Mac OS and you want to retrieve it," says Paul West, a former archivist at Universal Music. "Look at the hoops you have to go through for that. Multiply that by an incredible factor to try to retrieve music."

Smash Mouth had to go rerecord parts of their 1999 hit "All Star" for a TV ad when the digital master was missing tracks. Engineers at EMI have discovered that drums and percussion effects on some Eighties recordings are gone. As a result, engineers are sometimes forced to reconstruct these effects themselves. "You open a session even from 10 years ago, and it might have a plug-in that's not supported, so you don't have that effect anymore," says Greg Parkin, VP of archives at EMI. "Our guys are becoming detectives — it's a booming industry."

Hard drives, which became standard in the past decade, present their own problems. Label archivists tell horror stories about receiving hard drives that are blank or filled with unidentified files. "You'll get a drive with thousands of files on it," says Chris Lacinak of AudioVisual Preservation Solutions, which has helped preserve music for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "Imagine if all the songs in your iTunes library just said 'Track 1' or 'Track 2.' Ten years later, when you want to do a remix or collect outtakes — good luck."

When a multitrack digital tape is missing or inaccessible, the music isn't completely gone; it still exists on backup tapes or CDs. But it's the multitrack masters that soundtrack supervisors and video-game companies need for their projects. The Wallflowers wanted to license one of their songs to Guitar Hero — but discovered that the drum track, recorded on a separate file, couldn't be found. "If people can't figure out why a song isn't on Guitar Hero, there's a good chance it's because there's no way to revive the digital master file," says one industry source.

Unfortunately, future-proofing digital music isn't easy. The Library of Congress report recommended regularly migrating files to updated systems, a costly expense. (The library estimates $187,500 for every 1,000 hours of audio.) Bob George of the ARChive of Contemporary Music, which has collected more than 2 million CDs, LPs and tapes of decades of pop music, says he won't be converting the library's collection to hard drives. "By the time we'd finish," he says, "there would be a new system for digitizing."

Labels are starting to take notice of these digital-archiving issues. Some keep their files backed up on servers in climate-controlled rooms. Others, like EMI and Universal, immediately convert files of new albums onto systems like Linear Tape-Open (LTO), a heavy-duty digital-tape format used by banks to back up their data, and store the tapes in vaults around the country. "Down the road, LTO may make way for something else," says EMI's Parkin. "The point is to make sure it's safe. With all these new revenue streams, we have to make sure we're packaging every single asset as best as possible for the future."

http://www.rollingstone.c...s-20101207

Makes ya wonder what format Prince is keeping all his vault ish on.

It WAS a rare good read though (for RS)....got me to thinking about my own digital issues.

MickyDolenz said:

Bob George of the ARChive of Contemporary Music,

sosgemini said:

Makes ya wonder what format Prince is keeping all his vault ish on.

You mean the most overrated thing in history?

errant said:

MickyDolenz said:

Bob George of the ARChive of Contemporary Music,

That skinny motherfucker with the high voice?

I remember reading an article in Musician magazine sometime around the late 1990's-early 2000's that highlighted the efforts by producers such as Steve Albini and Butch Vig to buy up all of the remaining analog recorders and tapes on the market to keep their archives on. They never liked the digital format to begin with, because they said that the loops and distortions they produced on a lot of their music got washed out on digital recordings. But most of all, they wanted to preserve the legacy of analog recording.

lastdecember said:

sosgemini said:

Makes ya wonder what format Prince is keeping all his vault ish on.

You mean the most overrated thing in history?

No, that would be the entire Beatles catalogue.

Moonbeam said:

lastdecember said:

You mean the most overrated thing in history?

No, that would be the entire Beatles catalogue.

Well, my response would be: What we know of Prince's valut is legendary, what we don't know could be the same, better, or worse than what has leaked. The wonderful thing is...is that there is even one track out there hidden away that is half as good as the Original Old Friends 4 Sale...then I can calmly say his vault is underrated. I mean really...do you really think the vault is full of crap? This is a man who has released crap with Tony M, and left crazy good songs locked up all these years. Somebody like Bart Van Halen might talk about how he thinks the valut is full of shit, but for Fuck's Sake, Bart hasn't liked a new Prince recording since...well since I could fit in my $77 Lotus Flow3r T Shirt 15 years before I bought it.

stillwaiting said:

Moonbeam said:

No, that would be the entire Beatles catalogue.

Well, my response would be: What we know of Prince's valut is legendary, what we don't know could be the same, better, or worse than what has leaked. The wonderful thing is...is that there is even one track out there hidden away that is half as good as the Original Old Friends 4 Sale...then I can calmly say his vault is underrated. I mean really...do you really think the vault is full of crap? This is a man who has released crap with Tony M, and left crazy good songs locked up all these years. Somebody like Bart Van Halen might talk about how he thinks the valut is full of shit, but for Fuck's Sake, Bart hasn't liked a new Prince recording since...well since I could fit in my $77 Lotus Flow3r T Shirt 15 years before I bought it.

We're getting slightly off topic but we also have to consider the fact that other than some of the NPGMC era tracks we have practically no idea what kind of songs are in the vault circa 1997-2010. Of course it's possible that Prince is not as prolific as he once was and there may be a good deal of mediocre songs but I have to believe that over a fourteen year span there is at least a boxed sets worth of quality music. Hopefully we will all get the chance to hear many more vault tracks before we all die!

I agree- Prince's vault contains a lot of top notch stuff. Many of my very favorite Prince songs have never seen an official release.

This is a very REAL issue on personal and professional fronts.

sosgemini said:

Makes ya wonder what format Prince is keeping all his vault ish on.

I know a great deal of it is analog tape but isn't the bigger question if the material is even salvageable at this point?

I recall comment at one point that much of the original tapes are horribly degraded and that engineers (?) at Paisley Park had brought in ovens to "bake the tapes" and convert them to new storage in order to save the content and that Prince canceled it all at the last minute. This was years and years and years ago.

The vault may be full of gummy reels at this point.

jtfolden said:

sosgemini said:

Makes ya wonder what format Prince is keeping all his vault ish on.

I know a great deal of it is analog tape but isn't the bigger question if the material is even salvageable at this point?

I recall comment at one point that much of the original tapes are horribly degraded and that engineers (?) at Paisley Park had brought in ovens to "bake the tapes" and convert them to new storage in order to save the content and that Prince canceled it all at the last minute. This was years and years and years ago.

The vault may be full of gummy reels at this point.

I read that, too, but I don't see why Prince's tapes have degraded worse than other, older tapes (the Beatles, for example)

The topic reminds me of how Scorsese is into the preservation of old films.

Musicians need to get involved to save old music.

stillwaiting said:

Moonbeam said:

No, that would be the entire Beatles catalogue.

Well, my response would be: What we know of Prince's valut is legendary, what we don't know could be the same, better, or worse than what has leaked. The wonderful thing is...is that there is even one track out there hidden away that is half as good as the Original Old Friends 4 Sale...then I can calmly say his vault is underrated. I mean really...do you really think the vault is full of crap? This is a man who has released crap with Tony M, and left crazy good songs locked up all these years. Somebody like Bart Van Halen might talk about how he thinks the valut is full of shit, but for Fuck's Sake, Bart hasn't liked a new Prince recording since...well since I could fit in my $77 Lotus Flow3r T Shirt 15 years before I bought it.

Interesting as i had 'Deposition' years and years ago, that's days of unreleased stuff. I've heard alot of Prince's unreleased stuff back to 'The Rebels', i'm not convinced by a lot of it. It's not stuff i revisit a lot. Honestly out of everything i've heard, i'd say there's half a dozen albums worth of decent stuff at a push.

I'm more interested in what state those songs might be in.

NDRU said:

I read that, too, but I don't see why Prince's tapes have degraded worse than other, older tapes (the Beatles, for example)

The age of master tapes is irrelevant, it's how and where they're stored that makes the most difference. I'm pretty sure the Beatles stuff is well preserved. You can record something today on tape, but put them in a basement with a lot of humidity or near a large magnet, then there's a problem.

This is in the Rolling Stone issue with John Lennon on the cover (John's final interview). I really enjoyed this article. This is the kinda stuff I used to expect to read about in Rolling Stone!