"We owe our artists transparency. We owe them answers." That's UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP chairman/CEO LUCIAN GRAINGE in a letter to his staff about the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE's story on the 2008 fire that destroyed much of UMG's West Coast archives. While still insisting that "many of the assertions [in JODY ROSEN's story] and subsequent speculation are not accurate," Grainge appears to be softening the dismissive tone of the company's initial responses to the reporting, and a little—just a little—more open about what was lost. "The loss of even a single piece of archived material is heartbreaking," he wrote. "I will ensure that the senior management of this company, starting with me, owns this." Rosen's story suggests about 175,000 pieces of material were lost. Testing Grainge's vow of transparency, lawyer HOWARD KING, whose firm KING, HOLMES, PATERNO & SORIANO represents several UMG artists who plan to sue, has asked the company for "a complete inventory of all master recordings, including finished sound recordings as well as outtakes, that were destroyed in the fire." All indications, so far, suggest UMG doesn't know. The public is owed some transparency, too. The Times reported that UMG a decade ago misled reporters—and, by extension, the public—about the losses. UMG is a private company, obviously, but it's a steward, via its archives, of a century's worth of musical history. The masters may belong to the company, but the history belongs to all of us... Farewell to the TWITTER account EXTINCTOPHONICS, which I was first made aware of Tuesday morning and which had deleted all its content by Tuesday afternoon. It was posting YOUTUBE clips of obscure and/or out-of-print recordings whose masters were reportedly lost in the Universal fire and which, therefore, may be in danger of actual extinction. I'd love to know who created the account and what happened... In a strange non-mea-culpa mea culpa, LYRICFIND, which supplies song lyrics to GOOGLE, says it may have "unknowingly" wound up with cut-and-pasted GENIUS lyrics in its database as a result of sourcing lyrics from other lyric sites that copied Genius' content. I am not, I feel the need to point out, making that up. The company goes on to explain where its lyrics come from, which I find fascinating. LyricFind staffers start with "a copy of the lyric from numerous sources (including direct from artists, publishers, and songwriters), and then proceed to stream, correct, and synchronize that data. Most content our team starts with requires significant corrections before it goes live in our database." A couple thoughts: A) Publishers: How hard would it be to send the right lyrics to the sites who are paying to license them, including LyricFind? Wait, I used to work in streaming music. It's hard and it's everybody's fault. Strike that question. B) Lyric sites who have licensed the rights to supply lyrics to me, you, Google and whoever else is using them: Maybe don't cut-and-paste your content from your competitors. I cut-and-pasted the word "unknowingly" a couple sentences ago and I just did it again, which is different for a number of reasons including that it isn't literally the entirety of the content that I produce... SPOTIFY is in on FACEBOOK's Libra cryptocurrency... CEO CHARLES CALDAS stepping down at MERLIN... See THE COMET IS COMING if you have the chance. RIYL: Jazz, techno, psychedelic rock, furiously repeating saxophone riffs, apocalypse, renewal, the lifeforce of the deep mystery... RIP ZIGGY.