Please help us convince the record industry to see that the surviving master tapes of music recorded in the 1950s through the 1980s are priceless, irreplaceable cultural artifacts deserving only the greatest care.

But haven't all the classic recordings from the 1950s through the 1980s already been preserved?

Not if you believe that preservation means no alteration and no loss of quality. When even casual listeners find an original analog recording sounding notably superior to its digital copy, we must question the quality of that copy. The surviving analog master tapes are the only true reference.

“Meanwhile, the analog tapes in the vaults are all disintegrating.” — Neil Young, 2019

Analog magnetic audio tapes can experience chemical degradation over time, rendering them fragile and vulnerable to damage (or even destruction) just from being played back. Not wanting the expense of storing thousands of aging master tapes in-house, the major record companies began shipping their collections to off-site storage facilities more than thirty years ago.

Today in 2025, these tapes are now being retrieved for things like cutting new lacquer masters for vinyl re-issues, or for Dolby Atmos remastering. For convenience or cost savings, irreplaceable tapes are routinely played back on vintage studio tape recorders, a potentially harmful or even destructive practice that is clearly not responsible conservation. The widely adopted “Just bake it and then play it” approach to handling heritage master tapes is dangerously uninformed. (Contact us if you’d like to read technical papers on this topic.)

Where are the scientists?

To help stop further damage to irreplaceable heritage master tapes, we’re bringing in science-based conservation and preservation specialists and building a multi-million dollar facility in Santa Barbara, California that will be staffed with expert personnel and equipped with state-of-the-art specialized analog audio magnetic tape playback hardware. This work will let the public hear the often astonishing audio fidelity of many historic tapes for the very first time. Importantly, we’re making our services available to recording copyright owners worldwide, free of cost.

Our mission is to ensure that the artist's creative work has been carefully preserved for enjoyment by future generations. It's about respecting what those artists of the golden era of music recording created for us.