The UMG warehouse fire

I don't have much to add to this story beyond expressing the same feelings of shock and sadness as everyone else.  I do think that this may well be the biggest music-related story ever, with no exaggeration.  At the very least it must be the biggest musical *recording*-related story ever.  Between the astounding, beyond all words loss of precious musical data and incomprehensibility of such a thing being successfully covered up for over ten years (in the internet + social media era no less), I can't imagine anything as significant and far-reaching as this happening again in my lifetime. 

People who think that the music "lives on out there digitally and in people's collections so nothing was really lost" are missing the point.  First of all, loss of the master recordings means no more remastering/remixing of any of these works, ever again.  No self-respecting label would ever remaster from a copy, which is why UMG reissues had dried up to nearly nothing in the past several years (now it makes sense why).  And nobody who buys the remastered recordings would want to pay good money to hear something remastered from inferior copies.  Second, and more importantly, the loss of the originals of any work of art is an irretrievable loss of human culture.  Imagine the Mona Lisa burning up in a fire, and someone claiming that it didn't matter, countless reproductions of it live on in print, in everything from art textbooks to postcards, so it's going to be OK.  Imagine all original copies of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays going up in smoke, and claiming that it's fine because we have the Penguin editions.  Every generational copy picks up omissions and errors that weren't in the originals.  When the originals are gone, a tangible connection to the spirit and intention of the artist goes with it, never to return.