Sheesh people, at least read the article before proclaiming the loss to be "no big deal." Sure, most people don't care if a soulless music corporation can't make a tidy profit on yet another collection of John Coltrane music. But do you really believe that the destruction of the master recordings of Buddy Holly near-entire career is trivial? Or the loss of Chuck Berry's master recordings? Or the Chess back catalog?
Moreover, much of the older music we now hold in esteem comes from a re-evaluation that's happened over the years. Tastes change, and when we go back we discover things that missed the mark at the time but now seem prophetic and influential. So yes, the disappearance of tracks that hardly made a ripple 40 years ago is a potential tragedy. And sure, people have listened to Robert Johnson for years despite his legacy surviving only as tinny 78's, but wouldn't it be nice if it were otherwise? Who are the Robert Johnsons of the past 50 years waiting to be rediscovered and appreciated? Wouldn't it be better to have clean recordings rather than transcriptions from poorly pressed styrene 45's?
The ignorance and callousness on display in this thread is appalling, especially coming from musicians.
so that's 11 years ago.....can anybody say their lives are less because these masters aren't still sitting in a warehaouse collecting dust (the answer is no). So TL/DR...it doesn't really matter.
