But for Smithsonian Folkways, being in the “forever business” is an ethos that permeates their preservation efforts and their approach to working with contemporary artists. It’s epitomized in the mandate Asch gave the Smithsonian when it acquired Folkways: That every recording remain available in perpetuity. Not all 60,000 Folkways recordings are timeless, great or even merely good, nor are all of them of major historical importance.
Jeff Place, who joined Folkways in 1988, says keeping the tapes in a climate-controlled environment is paramount, adding the archive is outfitted with alarms that go off if the temperature or humidity fluctuate too much. There are also detailed disaster plans in place for every possible damage scenario, like if sprinkler water soaks the tapes during a fire, they would be quickly frozen, thawed and then dried out.
Important as preservation is, Place adds, “The archive is really about outreach — it’s about getting these recordings out for people to hear. It’s not for putting them in the backroom and locking them up and making sure they’re safe.”reported, Universal Music Group outsourced its archiving to Iron Mountain, a massive storage conglomerate that also houses master tapes for the other two major labels, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, after the 2008 fire.
“We had to promise Moe Asch that everything would be available in perpetuity and now we can promise the same thing to all the labels we acquire,” Schippers, the label’s director, says. “That’s probably the most convincing argument that we have [when talking to potential acquisitions], because we don’t have vast amounts of money. We are there for the legacy.
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