Library Music Lost Media

[KPMPK1001]

About a couple of years ago, I was introduced to the subject of lost media. For those wondering, lost media refers to any piece of media (i.e. music, film, and books) that is considered impossible to find. Ever since then, I have been fascinated by the topic of lost media.

So that made me wonder, what pieces of library music are considered lost media?

One example I can think of is two KPM International albums KPM INT 05 & KPM INT 07. Currently, there is no information about both albums online.

[Retronic]

Rouge RMS/LP 139 has never surfaced/ was never released.  It appears in a catalogue though.

[Lord Thames]

KPM INT 07 may be an LP by Syd Dale's New Elizabethans - the track Hampton Court was used as the signature tune for Radio 4's Woman's Hour, and the BBC paperwork says it was taken from KPM INT 07.

It's probably the same tracks as the 'A Sarabande Of Wives' LP, if this is correct.

[BenKirb]

Many of the tracks that were made for Pump Audio (a service of Getty Images) are lost media.

[Cold Inhuman Element]

There are at least ten Musax albums only issued as test pressings.
Two of those were reissued: Limonaire as Carousel - Merry-Go-Round (Crea Sound 8021) and Biorhythm / Fiction Scenes as Apocalypse (Magicabus 003), and the first track of Action 2 has been reissued in the Farfalla Records' Musax compilation.
The whole rest remains unavailable: a few test pressings were sold on Discogs but no viny rips popped out to my knowledge.
I am particularly interested by two albums: Catastrophe by Roger / Nardini and Impressions by Pierre Porte.

[TheMusicalAvenger]

One example I can think of is in the Impress Catalog. It shows us that multiple tape-exclusive songs in there are known to exist, but aren't available at any point today. One of these songs is called "Crescendo In Sex" and I feel like I need to hear what that would sound like.

[BenKirb]

Another piece of library music lost media I can think of is the original James & Aster library (not the Undercover library, Retromatic has that), which was presumably used by Prevue Guide.

[apmnut]

One "lost" library I've been wondering about is a "low-cost jazz library" put out by the NY company Musifex, who was the source for a whole pile of cues featured on some of Robert Hall's albums. A few squibs and ads they put out in Business Screen Magazine make mention of how this package offers such styles as "Jazz in the style of Tijuana Brass, Brubeck, Cal Tjader, Ramsey Lewis" and even "take a trip with psychedelic". I'm sure some of these cues were released on the Hall library, but since the library was released on tape, we may never know. (The Musifex library in particular is one I've been thinking about for a while thanks to their Robert Hall connection. I can't help but wonder if they had much more in their library than was featured in Hall's LPs that's never seen the light of day since the 60s or so.)

[godzfire]

About half of the Hollywood Film Music Library: https://librarymusicthemes.com/index.php?topic=1597.0

It was founded in 1989 by Robert J. Walsh as Hollywood Film Music Library. In 1994 it was acquired by Zomba-owned FirstCom Music. In 1999, the label was rebranded and relaunched as Hollywood Music. In 2002, BMG purchased Zomba and merged to create the BMG Zomba Production Music. BMG Zomba Production Music was then sold to Universal Publishing Production Music, which Hollywood Music is still a part of.

As a result of the merger, all Hollywood Film Music Library releases were removed from Firstcom's website and discontinued, eliminating any digital options and further CD releases. That was over 20 years ago now, so all that's left was finding any physical copies people had over the years. Many of the CDs are 25-30 years ago. In the two decades since- and searching all over the world- all we've been able to locate is about half.

The chance became bleak when the founder Robert J. Walsh passed away unexpectedly in 2018. His studio and website was shut down a year or two later. This eliminated even the ability for us to contact him to ask or get permission for his work. Trying to go through Universal hasn't worked either, since it seems those HFML publishing rights ended 20 years ago with the merger, and they can't republish with Mr Walsh's death.

[Walk the Skies 202]

The end credits of 2011's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules lists an arrangement of "All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Jeremy Sweet and Michael Whittaker from the MasterSource label, and although this info is corroborated by GEMA and ASCAP has an entry for the track, it doesn't seem to be on Universal Production Music's website, and I cannot find any other info about it online that isn't the film's own credits, meaning there no indication as to what MasterSource album it is/was on or if it was removed at some point past 2011.

[snowydive]

Christian Poulet did around half a dozen albums each for Kosinus and Koka, and AFAIK you won't find them on any music library site.

There was some legal action around the millennium sort of time and a bit of to-and-fro with removing then restoring them, but they ended up being removed from streaming catalogues in 2004. Unfortunately a search I've done involving these albums started in 2010 or so, so they were gone long before I was looking for the material.

Thankfully Kosinus is well distributed on CD and any demand from collectors was far outweighed by the sheer number in circulation, so I have hard copies of all three that I needed.

But a side effect is that the affected cues are not in any audio matching databases - at least those that run on a sample (they're in MusicBrainz) so identifying the albums was a nightmare. Luckily, Poulet's really old website has sample clips of all his cues.