Universal Music Group Opens its Iron Mountain Tape Vault And You are Invited!
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- Опубликовано: 8 авг 2023
- TrackingAngle's exclusive visit to Universal Music Group's Iron Mountain tape vault outside of Pittsburgh also includes a tour of Iron Mountain Entertainment Services' facilities. You'll get to go deep within the former limestone mine where Universal Music Group has one of its worldwide tape storage facilities and see how, with the help of Iron Mountain Entertainment Services, the company catalogues and keeps track of its vast audio and video tape holdings.
The visit also includes a ride through other parts of the labyrinthian, underground facility where governmental agencies we can't identify also store data, safe from natural environmental damage as well as from acts of war.
You'll see the process by which a licensee gets selected assets for a music album reissue, whether it's the tape for an all-analog reissue or a digital file for a digitally sourced reissue. You'll see the action from finding the tapes in the vast facility to cataloguing it and preparing it for reissue.
The visit was like going onto a science fiction movie set, only this was real! For most people this will be a first and only opportunity to see this facility in this almost two hour long presentation. Watch as much or as little as you wish, but if you don't watch all of it, you'll be missing out on some amazing footage shot deep within the mine.
UMG also prepared for TrackingAngle.com a series of displays showing existing master tapes that The New York Times claims were burned in the tragic 2008 fire atop Universal Mountain outside of Los Angeles including the Buddy Holly catalog, which did not burn-as anyone who's purchased Analogue Productions' AAA reissues cut from original master tapes of "Buddy Holly" and "The Chirpin' Crickets" knows still exists-I've seen pictures of the tapes used for the cut. The newspaper refuses to correct their mistakes.
The visuals UMG provided will appear shortly on The TrackingAngle.com website. Watch for the story!
Tracking Angle thanks Universal Music Group, Iron Mountain and Iron Mountain Entertainment Services for allowing us into the usually off-limit facility and for everyone's hospitality and cooperation. It was an experience I'll long remember!
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I love how they have all these important tapes (they wouldn’t be there if they weren’t) and people are standing over the boxes with coffee and water 😂
Ozzy and his son Jack did an episode of their "Ozzy and Jack's world detour" where they went to Iron Mountain. They pulled a mastertape out and played it back for Ozzy and he got pretty emotional, saying he hadn't forgotten how great Randy Rhodes was.
I saw that one it was nice!!!
It’s a head stack, not headstock!
@@robdisnerexactly.
Jack Osborne is such a good son!
So are the Nirvana or Prince Master Tapes burned or still in existence? Because the fire consumed a lot of Master Tapes from major bands.
Good to see the Buddy Holly masters are safely where they belong. Seeing what's left of the original 7" boxes with Buddy's handwriting gave me the chills.
Likely dubs or separated/mixed originals with dubs. Hoffman is known to have "swapped" masters for copies. Details can be found with a Google search.
Hey, wow! So the FBI recovered the Buddy Holly tapes from Hoffman's basement!? That is GREAT news!
Only once he's damaged them, repaired the damage by patching in the missing sections from an '80s CD, then 'mastered' the results with a bloated, mids-heavy EQ to appeal to the 'golden ears' crowd. And he can't do it this week as he's having lunch with his good friend Pete Best.
@@MeddledPete's paying, of course...still flush with all that Anthology cash *Steve's rich & famous friends*
Seeing those Jellyfish reels gives me hope of a reissue one day.
How anyone can work there and not just want to pull tapes that are found and just listen to them - is the ULTIMATE in self control. The sheer amount of brilliance that's in there is astounding !
Some of these tapes are in an unplayable state and have been carefully digitized long ago, completely obsoleting their deteriorating sources, some of which we are looking at. Much of a decade, 80-90 or so, of professional recording tape was made on a backing that just deteriorated to glue without close supervision. They need a baking and cooling for many hours before they can ever be put on a machine, and then, just for a day or two. These are, for the most part, nostalgic ‘saves’ of original recordings. Typically, a bathroom isn’t large enough to hold all the analog tape of a single major release. Once content owners decide to spend the money and ‘future-proof’ their work, an immortal reference is created, to be copied literally hundreds of times over the years.
Mark my words. Some of these items will be for sale one day.
I can understand .. as the 7" home made reels that I have (that were made in the late 60s and 70s) have the backing separating from the Mylar ... and one it flakes off - its "over" :(@@artysanmobile
he says as he drinks a cup of coffee in a crappy cup , are you kidding
As an archivist, I'll tell you how:
Because the next new tape MUST be transferred and is another treasure to listen/watch.
It's kind of ironic that "professional tape" was made worse than consumer grade tapes (that I typically work with) by materials that were supposed to help it.
Probably the best video i've seen all year.......amazing to see all of that heritage/history being cared for.......
Just for the local history of the Bay Area music scene: Beatnik Beach was originally called Bamboo then they changed their name to Zula Pool who was the grandmother of the bass player. His name was Chris Ketner.Ketner was the founder of the SF new wave band Chrome Dinette. Most of the early songs were given writing credits Ketner/Sturmer. Sturmer was the drummer. Keyboard player was names Se Padilla. Se is a good friend of mine and now resides in the Czech Republic running the beer museum in Prague. After the breakup of Beatnik Beatch, Sturmer formed jellyfish. The Zula Pool era really captured the sound of new wave San Francisco music. Tracks from a lost demo include the songs: Same War, The Lie, Watching the Rain, and Can't Go On. I loved seeing the band play at the Berkeley Square when I was in college. Wish someone would put this music out!
This is fascinating. I used to spend some time in radio station libraries listening to music. This looks like it could be orders of magnitude more fun... Back about 20 years ago the discovery they made was the stereo master of Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline. Up to that point, apparently CDs had been made from a safety copy. The master turned up in a storage unit which had been rented by Bob Johnston. The SACD they made from this master sounded great!
As to your question about acetates, the second hole was used on some equipment to keep the drag from the cutting head from causing the disk to slip on the lathe.
This is quite possibly my most favourite video on You Tube ever! I worked in a major film and TV archive and I recognise the same passion I have for archive in the UMG guys. It's great to know it's all in good hands. Thanks for the video.
Agreed! What an incredible video!
Those tapes that were burned in the 2008 fire SHOULD HAVE BEEN SENT HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Awesome. I myself have played gigs with desk audio to vhs hifi, been waiting to archive maybe 60+ 3hr tapes with min 2-3hrs of audio on each. Any ideas how to archive all this material, Inc Analog- digital8 sony camera tape stuff..
Any ides would be greatly recieved.
Being involved in IT backup storage for years, I find it very lax to allow people with open cups around tape products. I was also surprised to see so many employees involved in this process.
Todays companies need to provide their employees an open comfortable workplace, they were all professional adults competent at their jobs and enjoy being there. Be open.
I think you’re both (kind of ) right. There needs to be processes around ensuring the safety of these tapes. Employees need to be comfortable, within the scope of safe practice. They are professionals, but accidents can still happen. The safety systems in place should reflect this.
@@hooville9059 open cups increases the risk of damaging irreplaceable assets during handling. I don't understand why this is OK when you're near or handling assets, but it's fine if you're at your desk.
Not to mention lack of gloves in use.
The whole place seems shambolic to me. Comfortable environment??? Coffee????
Oh my God! I want a job in this treasure trove! I love working with music on magnetic tape!!! I want to digitize that unique sound! God, how lucky those people who work there are.
I worked at Ocean Way and remember seeing those Beatnik Beatch tapes in our vault. I was also there during the recording of Spilt Milk, which is a legendary record.
Wow, as a musicologist and a database programmer this is right up my alley. Do you comprehend how much information is here? It will NEVER be fully cataloged in a searchable form. Some items will decay and be lost. The Library of Congress has shown that infomation is lost faster than it can be preserved. Quite sad actually. My professional side would love to see how this infomation is currently stored and retireved. This is what "big data" is all about. It is not stored as indexed information that is searchable by key words. It is stored as free form blogs and images (info dumps!) searched by interconnections and context. Big data and indexed data both will be used to handle this mountain of information. And hopefully we can save all this for whatever future is out there for mankind.
These tapes are surely starting to decay at best. Some likely have been lost, but no one knows yet. There should be a massive effort to rip each and every one to as high a bit rate in an uncompressed format as possible. Then properly backed up.
I was in charge of putting bar codes on boxes in 1984. Iron Mountain was the first to do it and it led to explosive growth.
I used to work at Iron Mountain, I've seen the Sony vault and some of the titles there. I guess here Universal is allowing us to see the master tapes still in existence after the 2008 fire in Los Angeles.
There’s something comforting about seeing masters with the word “Decca” on them. I know there were many Decca masters that were sadly lost in the Universal vault fire in Los Angeles a few years ago. It’s nice to see that there are some of them that survived elsewhere.
In December 1987 I was a volunteer for a local radio/tv station in the Netherlands. Back then, there were only a few local stations in the Netherlands and only a few of those did TV. Most of what I did would probably be regarded as pretty lame nowadays but I have a lot of good memories. A colleague had the idea of making a show with music videos and he somehow got through to the national headquarters of the record companies to get them to loan us a few video tapes of music videos. Unfortunately ours was a U-Matic studio and all those record companies only had B-type and C-type open real tapes, because that's what the world had moved on to by then. So my colleague asked for a favor with someone who worked at the national TV broadcasting center (there were no commercial stations in the Netherlands back then), and we went to their VTR room where they transferred those open reel tapes to U-Matic for us. It was an unforgettable day and I learned so much. But it would probably be completely insignificant compared to your trip to Iron Mountain.
Does this mean that Universal Music will actually get off their backsides and actually reissue many Soul & R & B Albums that they seemed so disinterested in giving the time of day? Also, they need to give the Motown label the respect it deserved by relaunching the label that was so criminally allowed to all but die! I look to the future, but I won't hold my breath!
Older lacquers have either one or three off-center holes
to engage a pin on the lathe platter to prevent rotational slippage.
Modern disc lathes use vacuum to hold the blank to the platter,
therefore there are no drive holes in lacquers used on them.
All those open cups of liquid around that archival material shock me.
That answers some of my questions on how to store different kinds of media , masters and whatnot. I had read that there were underground vaults for this purpose but this exceeded my expectations. I have no idea how many million hours of recording there are stored at this vault , but surely no one lives enough to hear all of them. Thank you for sharing this interesting visit.
Tape head's paradise. Wonderful to see. Thanks for posting! :)
So much history there. I could never work in a place like that cause my ADHD would be in overdrive and I would be a squirrel bouncing off the walls there. That place is awesome.
some amazing pieces of history, im glad they're in safe hands!
I've been to an Iron Mountain facility in London for tapes i was looking for and i was in heaven lol
Jaw dropping archive. Thanks for sharing this video, Michael.
An archivist's dream... Many thanx for this...
I lost my wife four years ago. I thought of her as one of the greatest vocalists I ever heard, and she only had 35 years. I was her writing partner, her archivist, her engineer, and the guy who wrote and recorded all of the parts. We were scoped out by mca paramount and she had talked to the A&R guy, and we were headed for that... she had recorded with epic, and I had with Republic/mca... we produced a country artist, and they liked our work. We hadn't even started in earnest...so now I'm trying to get the tracks done and reconnect with the label. I feel that every track I work on is history... her folks never cared. I am her conservator. I really miss her. I miss the freedom of throwaway sessions that became amazing, or didn't... the latter never happened... now I have to do it, or no one will. It's tough.
ruclips.net/video/HNnayiJLHqk/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/2NvhRGjiCPw/видео.html
One day at a time, Sean.
You’ll do it.
Notes app is your friend.
Finally managed to see the whole thing. I am speechless. This is truly amazing. Thank you so much Michael for this extremely interesting tour! I think I want to live in Iron Mountain.
I love your Videos.Great infos,man!!
Are all of the Holly tapes there, or are the ones stolen by the MCA tape compiler still missing?
I believe everything is accounted for…
Steve Hoffman?
WOW! Mind boggling. Michael you always provide us with such great content that only you can. Watched to the end and how difficult gathering all the tape for a remaster must have been before their new scanning equipment development. It was a pleasure to see how friendly and accommodating UMG and IM staff were, they will be amazed the benefit this will have for them. I still miss your WFDU radio hour! The Best.
Let’s see the subscriber by number go up. Come on people!!!
Michael I have 2 accounts and subscribe only on one, I'll fix that!@@trackingangle929
Such an interesting visit. I've been at Iron Mountain several times but not for such a glamorous reason 😊. An amazing labyrinth of tunnels big enough to drive thru. Very secure. Thanks for sharing Michael. Greg
Very interesting and cool - and you were right Michael, I enjoyed the entire presentation - my hat's off to Universal Music for allowing you to bring us the "bird's eye view" of everything!
COMPLETELY FASCINATING!!! What I wouldn't give to be able to look down there, or better yet have access to listen to what's down there, at any time. It looks like organized chaos but it sounds like they really have a pattern down. It must be overwhelming to have gotten to this point. Thanks for the video Michael. I saw you mentioning it I think on Steve's channel a month or two ago and I'm glad to now be able to see what you were talking about.
Brian in Fort Worth 🎶
One of the coolest videos you’ve ever done. Seeing these pieces of history is incredible.
At one point during the pandemic I worked at a scanning site. So, I am familiar with the OCR concept - but this setup blows it out of the water. Fantastic presentation. lucky you and thank you.
Hi Michael, I just wanted to say, "Thank you for allowing us on this journey with you". Simply an amazing place and I enjoyed every minute. This place just shot up on my Bucket list, of places to visit. One of your best posts for sure.
I used to deliver tapes there when I drove for FedEx. Amazing experience.
Fascinating, immense, crazy! Thanks Michael!
Aaaaamazing. Props to you for preserving musical history.
Michael that was a wonderful tour!! Nice to know we didn’t lose the tapes. What a interesting tour too see how we get the box sets and other projects
Great tour of the UMG tape vault facility Michael. I was lucky to have a complete tour, including the tape vault at Abbey Road Studios in 1983. I spent most of the day in St. Johns Wood. Seeing this video reminded me of it and one of the gents is wearing an Abbey Road Studios shirt.
After all I've read about the 2008 Universal vault file this is quite enlightening and a relief to know that they do have quite a lot.I also remember the comments from people about Iron Mountain, as if things would just go there and never be seen again. Clearly that's not the case!
im so very happy to know that this facility and its staff exists...there IS hope for the hooman race after all
thank you very much!! 😁😁
Thanks for posting this. This is a super cool look at this place.
Wonderful! Thank you for sharing your experience with us. A truly incredible journey. Thank you! -- Cookie Marenco
Absolutely fascinating! This is an amazing place- like some giant underground lair from the final scenes in a James Bond movie! This is truly state of the art. I was engrossed throughout the 1 hour and 40 minutes!
You have to give it up to the people that take care of our history. Props to all the librarians out there as well.
Fascinating insight! At 53:53, Superfly 1990 album - Curtis Mayfield & ICE-T - I love track 1, but also 3/4 remixed by Mantronix.
Great vid, thanks for posting
Loved the Criteria box. So many hit from there.
For me, just a interested guy, with absolutly no experience in the industrie, this was mind blowing, informativ and entertaining. Thank you.
Such a cool video. I am a music supervisor/music clearance person dealing with UME daily for approvals for film/TV/etc. I have always wondered about this elusive “vault” holding their treasured assets. Thank you for the video!
Thanks Michael, enjoyed that to the end...cheers.
Amazing..all this and Day of the Dead too, manythnx!
Incredible, thank you Mr. Fremer :)
This video was worth the wait! Wow, Michael. Just, wow!
Mike really gives some amazing content I can only dream of going there and playing some of those master tapes
amazing tapes collection
This is truly magnificent! Thank you so much for uploading this
This is the most exciting amazing thing I've seen on RUclips in quite a while! Under the mountain I'd guess it's pretty much "fire proof"!😮😮😮
mind blowing place that s the only way to store those gems of our music history....love it .....
This is a fabulous video. I had heard about that place. Thanks for showing it
Thank you so much for sharing this. What an amazing operation -- so much expertise under one roof, all working towards the same goal of preserving these incredibly important items for, hopefully, eternity. I can tell these folks care deeply about what they're doing.
“It took us a while to figure out how to get that 12:00 to blink” 😂😂😂. Love this video. Only Michael is bringing this kind on content to light! Thank you!
Looks like something out of a scifi movie. Love it.
Seeing the Buddy Holly stuff made y heart soar with delight. This is an epic video for audiophiles IMO. A serious look at a very well kept batch of music history.
To all who had a hand in this I sincerely thank you for allowing this look behind the scenes.
I need to watch that part again. Do you remember approximately what time in the video that Holly's tapes were discussed?
Fascinating - more of the same soon please Michael....
Fantastic video! Thanks
So glad to know this place exists.. I would love to see whats down there myself, and I know Id find plenty of Gold.
Thanks!!! Once again You done it what a great video!! Thank you for sharing
This was spellbinding! I do the same sort of thing, on a minute scale, with my area of speciality which is vintage analog audio equipment i.e. the gear used in studios to record this stuff and home equipment for high-quality playback. I’ll be spreading this video far and wide inasmuch as so many of the people I work with both professionally and personally will be as fascinated with it as I am.
This was a truly an outstanding watch for which I thank you.
Peace,
DrRick
Interesting. Btw - do you then know what brand & edition of recording tape was largely used by major labels from like 1974 to 1984? I’m assuming for masters it was all Scotch.
Fascinating video! thank you for posting.
The extra hole in a lacquer record is to provide enough torque for the cutting stylus. Sometimes 2 holes, sometimes 4. Someone else has probably said this but too many comments to look through.
This is great, I love these longer videos!
A fantastic insight into something I've always wondered about. Thanks Michael! Good to see all of those precious artifacts being stored and maintained so carefully. Also great to see all of the skills and backgrounds that come to play to successfully pull off an archive of this sort of scale. Amazing.
@3:34, am I the only one that thinks is GROSSLY IRRESPONSIBLE for Patrick Kraus to be holding a cup of coffee standing over the boxes of masters laying at his feet - with Robert Koszela doing exactly the same thing @3:56?!?!
WOW this is so amazing. Original recordings preserved
I know it’s good that so many important tapes are protected. But so many of them will probably never be heard again, and to me that’s super sad. There’s some people out there who really understand tape preservation, and really respect the art of recording and archiving historical tapes such as these who would actually get to appreciate them if they were available to some extent
Thank you for posting this video! 👍 Very interesting and entertaining.
This is fabulous! I had no idea that there was a centralized archive/storage facility for tapes and probably countless other treasures. Thank you for the enlightening and great tour, Michael!
This just shows how serious the music business is. thank you for this!
And rigged (4080)
How serious the ORIGINAL music business is
The Holy Grail...I often wonder if all this stuff was in a very safe place. Great post for us needs to have a WOW moment. Greatly appreciated this post.
What an interesting watch, I was sad when it ended, def one of the best vids of the year.
i just needed to see the grey hair to know i would enjoy this channel. old vinyl heads are awesome. crazy video
“I can’t bring myself to cut any of this” said the caption, and thank you for not doing so. Wow!
Literally one of the coolest RUclips videos I've ever seen, wow!
Man thank u, I'm loving this!!! Lately I've got my hands on some digital stems of popular artists, and to see how the process starts, priceless.
Fascinating to see what types of operations occupy Iron Mountain. I've been interested in this place ever since I was a child and saw George Romero's Day of the dead. It was all filmed in that location.
Iron Mountain and also the old Monroeville Mall; as the zombies go up and down the escalators, one of the actors asks why they all came here. "Because it's the place they knew when they were alive."
I doubled checked, this is a different location than where they shot Day of the Dead. First thing I thought of too lol.
Fascinating video. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Mike that was a frigging trip! Soo cool
Amazing content! This is the stuff of dreams. Thank you so much for sharing.
Tremendous list Ron…enjoyed your thought process. These all had an impression on you in your youth clearly! Thanks for sharing Brother
This was so so interesting to watch and thank you for taking us along with you.
I even can imagine me for the rest of my life strolling through these hallways and reading stuff on card boxes despite I know I'm not allowed to pull only one out and actually hear it. OMG!
I feel a lot better with the price I paid for that BluRay copy of a title I already own on DVD-A, CD, LP, Cassette and 8-Track knowing that a portion of each of those purchases goes to maintain vaults & infrastructure like this.
Holy Sht.. I recorded Duke and the Drivers bk in the late 70s.. In fact I engineered for a bunch of those Boston bands. I didn't know that Duke & the Drivers released an album either.
Back then Boston was rocking.. I had one of a few 2" 24tk studios in town. We were on South St, about a mile from the Channel and dozens of other venues. That place was booked 24/7! It you were a band, production or even Pro sales or service. Boston was in a great time & place! And with the Eastern shuttle you could track all day in Boston and Mix all night in NY. I think it cost 50 bucks rd trip and flights left hourly.
Thx for the trip down memory lane..
I was there too! And on WBCN
I was invited to tour this facility several years go. Incredible place. The underground roads are large enough to accommodate two tractor-trailers side-by-side.
Beggars belief. Now just imagine the classified military DARPA Pentagon etc underground infrastructure about.
I'm excited for whatever is coming from those Louis Prima masters!!
One of my favorite RUclips videos that I found in a very long time. Thank you. I love to Digitize reel to reel tapes I do alot of AV format digitizing here in Florida. I'm 21.