Fire Wiped Out Their Masters. Now the Artists Are Suing

In 2008, a fire at Universal Studios Hollywood also hit a vault of master music recordings owned by Universal Music Group. The full scope of the damage wasn't revealed until earlier this month, when a New York Times investigation labeled it "the biggest disaster in the history of the music business." Now some big-name artists, or their estates, are suing, reports NPR. So far, the estates of Tupac Shakur and Tom Petty have joined the lawsuit, which is seeking class-action status, as have the bands Hole and Soundgarden and singer-songwriter Steve Earle. Among other things, the suit accuses UMG, which is the world's largest music company, of storing the masters in a "known firetrap," then lying about the extent of the damage.

According to the Times, the fire destroyed hundreds of thousands of masters—the original recordings from which subsequent recordings are made—belonging to a huge range of some of music's biggest names going back decades. UMG didn't comment to NPR, but it has previously accused the Times of overstating the scope of the fire's damage. Last week, the chairman of Vivendi, UMG's corporate parent, dismissed the new controversy over the 11-year-old fire as "noise." To which music attorney Howard King replied, per Variety: "The likelihood that their life's works may have been destroyed by the gross negligence of Universal Music is far from 'just noise' to any potentially affected artist." (More Universal Music Group stories.)