“The #recordings that #burned 🔥up in the Universal fire — like the songs that are blasting from car windows on the street outside your home, like all the records that you or I or anyone else has ever heard — represent a wonderment that we have come to take for granted.
For most of human history, every word spoken, every song sung, was by definition ephemeral: Air vibrated and sound traveled in and out of earshot, never to be heard again.
But #technology gave #humanity the means to catch sounds, to transform a soprano’s warble, a violin’s trill, #ChuckBerry’s blaring guitar, into something permanent and repeatable, a sonic artifact to which listeners can return again and again.”
#Music / #sound / #jazz / #soul / #rocknroll / #RockMusic / #analog / #digital / #archives / #UMG / #UniversalMusicGroup <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html>
