Original Digital Music and Sound Recordings
Original recordings of music and other performance from which retail products are derived, typically in multiple tracks and uncompressed high-resolution sound quality.
Examples
Original official recordings of a song, sound or performance owned by music industry
Hazards
Single point of failure; storage on old or degrading media; lack of ongoing investment in changing preservation requirements; lack of capability; poor documentation; dependence on small staff; Uncertainty over IPR or the presence of orphaned works
Complexity LimitationsMitigations
High-quality storage; meticulous and consistent replication; trusted repository; preservation requirement understood at the executive level and funded accordingly; leadership in preservation community; expert staff
Bit List History
Added to list: 2019Last Review
2023 Review
In 2019, this entry was added as a subset of a previous 2017 entry, ‘Digital Music Production and Sharing,’ which was split to draw attention to the different challenges faced by the different forms. Though it overlaps with other entries, including ‘Digital Archives of Music Production,’ it is a separate entry to emphasize the inherent and great value of original recordings over and above those distributed and the concomitant need for active preservation. Both the 2021 Jury and 2022 Taskforce agreed with the Endangered classification with no noted changes towards increased or reduced risk. The 2022 Taskforce additionally recommended use of the term original or primary rather than the term master, except for where it is part of a format’s formal name or an industry-standard use, which is now reflected in this entry and other relevant areas of the Bit List.
The 2023 Council agreed with the Endangered with the overall risks remaining on the same basis as before (‘No change’ to trend).
2024 Interim Review
These risks remain on the same basis as before, with no significant trend towards even greater or reduced risk (‘No change’ to trend).
Additional Information
The imminence of action will depend on format and age, and the significance of loss may be more largely felt if they are recordings of a major recording star.
This is interesting as the recording houses should be seeing the value of these – so why are they not taking responsibility for looking after them? Do they not feel it is in their financial interests? The archival practices of the studios are typically based on value – the recordings are assumed to be worth keeping. However, this means relatively low-value originals may not be transferred to new media in a timely way and could be lost. There is no comprehensive deposit scheme to address the long tail of music production, and it is often unclear exactly where responsibility lies.
Case Studies & Examples
- The Day the Music Burned, Rosen, J. (2019), The New York Times [accessed at 2023-10-24].
- MQA (Master Quality Authenticated), a means of digitally capturing and storing original master recordings as files without the usual loss in fidelity usually experienced with compressed audio files, has gone into administration - if you have MQA files it should still work. That being said, MQA is not lossless and it’s better to get true lossless FLAC files. See MQA has gone into administration: what does this mean for Tidal and supported products?, McKerrell, H (2023), What HI-FI? .
- Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying, Purdy, K. (2024), Ars Technica [accessed at 2024-09-13].
- Starting with complexity: Archiving digital-born music compositions from Mac systems of the 80s/90s, Mattmann, B. and Lindenmann, I. (2023), Digital Preservation Coalition [accessed at 2023-10-24].