A Disaster For Music: How A 2008 Fire Destroyed One Of The World’s Most Important Troves Of Music

UMG’s accounting of its losses, detailed in a March 2009 document marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” put the number of “assets destroyed” at 118,230. Randy Aronson considers that estimate low: The real number, he surmises, was “in the 175,000 range.” If you extrapolate from either figure, tallying songs on album and singles masters, the number of destroyed recordings stretches into the hundreds of thousands. In another confidential report, issued later in 2009, UMG asserted that “an estimated 500K song titles” were lost. – The New York Times

Hackers Stole And Demanded Ransom From Radiohead. So The Band Is Releasing The Music Tracks With Proceeds To Charity

The group announced on its social media platforms today that the archive—consisting mostly of unfinished music and clips from the mid-90s—had been stolen last week. The hacker, or hackers, demanded $150,000 to keep it from being released to the public, Radiohead said. In response, the band decided not only to ignore the ransom demand but release the entire trove of music to Bandcamp in aid of Extinction Rebellion, the new climate change movement. – Newsweek