Record label admits 'heartbreaking' losses after warehouse fire

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Image captionSir Lucian Grainge with Sheryl Crow and Elton John, both of whom are said to have lost music in the fire

A week after it was revealed that Universal Music's archive had been devastated by fire, the company's boss has described the losses as "painful".

In an email to staff, Sir Lucian Grainge said, "the loss of even a single piece of archived material is heartbreaking".

"We owe our artists transparency. We owe them answers".

Up to 500,000 recordings were destroyed by a fire at Universal Studios in 2008, the New York Times reported last week.

Original recordings by the likes of Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Nirvana, Eminem and Snoop Dogg are likely to have been destroyed - although an unknown quantity of them were digitised before the incident took place.

• Nirvana and Eminem music 'lost in fire'

Many of the recordings were said to be master tapes - the original studio source material from which commercially-released music is drawn; and which often contain alternative takes or unreleased songs that later become the basis for box sets and archival releases.

Universal Music downplayed the New York Times' story, citing "numerous inaccuracies" in its reporting and a "fundamental misunderstandings of the scope of the incident".

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