The fire burned for almost 24 hours and by the time it was over much of the musical heritage of the 20th century had gone up in smoke.
Master tapes for songs by British artists including Elton John, Eric Clapton and the Police were among those destroyed in the blaze that broke out on the Universal Studios backlot in Los Angeles early on June 1, 2008.
At the time Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s largest record company, insisted that although a warehouse full of film, television and sound recordings had burnt down, when it came to the music there was “no loss”.
Now a report based on court documents has revealed that a cultural catastrophe took place: the destruction of up to 500,000 recordings,