Sheryl Crow is the first artist to publicly confirm that all of her master recordings were lost in the Universal Studios fire along with music from Aretha Franklin, Buddy Holly, Duke Ellington, Billie Holliday, and many others.
Crow had master recordings, outtakes and unreleased music that was stored in the Universal Studio archives and there were no backups of the masters, no sprinkler system in the storage, and she’s devastated that Universal failed to contact artists about the losses which happened over eleven years ago.
According to the New York Times article, the fire was started by overnight maintenance work, however, Universal’s head archivist, Patrick Kraus, says the losses have been “overstated.”
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