That should be a felony and capitol offense.

This can only be followed up by

THEY DID WHAT?

I'd guess you've read The House That Trane Built by Ashley Kahn but here's a quote for those who haven't from Michael Cuscuna:

"I was able to find a lot of good Coltrane that was still unissued [in 1978], and of course I tore the place apart trying to find what I thought was the entire alternate version of A Love Supreme suite, with Archie Shepp and Art Davis, but found nothing."

"Some session reels survive: for instance the actual outtake reels from '65. But other tapes didn't. They must have been just thrown away to make space in a warehouse somewhere, or mislaid."

And then there's the story of the demolition of the RCA warehouse in Camden, NJ:

"RCA Victor decided to demolish their Camden warehouse in the early 1960s. This warehouse held four floors' worth of catalog and vault masters (most of them pre-tape wax and metal discs), test pressings, lacquer discs, matrix ledgers, and rehearsal recordings. A few days before the demolition took place, some collectors from the USA and Europe were allowed to go through the warehouse and salvage whatever they could take with them for their personal collections. Soon after, collectors and RCA Records officials watched from a nearby bridge as the warehouse was demolished, with many studio masters still intact in the building. The remnants were bulldozed into the Delaware River and a pier was built on top of them. In 1973, when the company decided to release all of Rachmaninoff's recordings on LPs (to celebrate the centennial of the composer's birth), RCA was forced to go to record collectors for materials, as documented by Time."

Read that too- seriously F-ed UP! What kind kind of shit company trashes a customer's intellectual property like that? I mean- those masters were not just chunks of metal- they were a final product that cost a lot of money to have made and NEVER should have just been junked. It's beyond belief frankly...

Quote:
Some not so good news for vinyl fans (the LP kind of vinyl not the other kind )

Lost Masters

I cannot believe that! Seriously fucked up. If I had the money, I would donate it to Matador to pay for the reissues. So much great music...

Like running a herd of wild ponies off a cliff.

Something doesn't make sense here.

A master is a valuable asset. A liquidator doing a complete inventory of the bankrupt company's assets should have held on to those properties. That is, unless the masters weren't even properly labeled with so much as the word "MASTER", and were mistaken as being something else entirely.

All we can hope at this stage is that a dumpster diver found the masters and knows what they are. Otherwise, they're gone.

First, this story is not accurate. Statement by Matador trom the now-updated article linked:

Quote:

"Matador's former vinyl pressing plant, 33 1/3 (originally the vinyl arm of WEA Manufacturing) went bankrupt in June 2006. Many labels, including Matador, lost vinyl LPs, jackets and masters in this bankruptcy.

This was 3 years ago and we have long since made new masters, re-pressed records at other plants and in general moved on, but a recent Comcast story about the bankruptcy ran without a date and was picked up by Pitchfork who added the adjective "recently" in reporting it. Although Pitchfork ran a correction and Comcast added in the historical context, it was too late and the story had run wild as an internet meme.

The crucial point to take home is: the bankruptcy and the loss of our masters took place 3 years ago, and is now ancient history! We have always released, and continue to release, just about every record on vinyl, and our sales in the format are quite healthy at the moment, thank you very much."

I notice they said "lost...in this bankruptcy." To me, it seems the masters didn't belong to Matador - they belonged to 33 1/3, and the rights to the music belonged to Matador. Thus, I wouldn't be surprised if they did sell the masters in the plan of dissolution -- just not to Matador. It is also possible they trashed them. They are not actually that valuable an asset, as the rights are not associated with them. Therefore, other record companies aren't going to shell out big bucks for masters they can't use. Collectors might pay something, but it isn't clear this would outweigh the transaction costs.

All that said, it is entirely possible they trashed an asset of some value to the bankruptcy estate, screwing their creditors. This would be fraud.

And on a positive note, Matador got some free advertising!

Yes- thanks for the clarification. Still seems bizarre the pressing plant didn't give matador the heads up and even try and make a buck by selling them the masters for future use.