Who Is Responsible For The Masters?

[therecordinghous]

I was contacted recently to transfer an old project from a previous DAW to Pro Tools, which is what i use now. Luckily, I had an archive on DVD of the sessions, and was able to recover all the songs, except one. This project is about 8 years old, and even though it was my recommendation at the end of the project that the client have their own hard drive, I dont think they understood the importance at the time. Now, I feel as though I am getting blamed for loosing the song. Would you feel obligated to help them re track the song? Technically, whoever pays for the sessions is responsible for the masters. I think I went beyond my responsibility keeping the sessions this long. What do you guys think?

[Musiclab]

When I finish a project I back everything up onto 2 sets of DVDS one and a backup. I charge them for the time to do it and I give it to them and erase their project from my hard drive. If they don't want to pay for the backup they would sign a release. Archiving your clients masters is madness if you do this for a living. Even leaving it on a hard is crazy, I think you should always have DVD or some other non mechanical backup

[BLUElightCory]

I generally give clients 6 months to bring in a backup drive if they want their master, or they can have DVDs for a small transfer fee. I keep masters as long as I can, but if I need to free up some space and someone's left their masters at the studio for a year or two, it's going bye-bye. I'm not an archival service, as much as I try.

I'm actually getting into having bands buy Firewire-equipped drives that they take with them when the mixes are finished. It's inexpensive and bands generally like to have their masters at the end of the session. So far I much prefer this option.

[The MPCist]

I give the labels the full multitrack sessions on DVD and keep the sessions backed up on my drives for up to a year.