Every year the emails start arriving, ‘it’s time to renew your home insurance.’ This annual event begs the question how many people actually claim on their house insurance each year.
It’s a fair question, some people put the money they spend on insurance into a savings account and use it should they have to make claim. After all insurance companies make it so hard to make a claim, what with excesses and other hoops to jump through, for many, home insurance feels like a waste of money. It makes one think why bother? We started to wonder if data archiving in the modern studio is the same.
Is Archiving Our Problem?
We got talking on the Expert team recently and started discussing this subject, the working title for this article was from Russ saying to the meeting ‘archiving is bollocks!’ Setting aside the colourful language as we discussed it, Russ asked us how often we pulled client projects out of archive, the consensus seemed to be almost never.
Which leads to the question; why do we bother spending time and money on drives, time running backups to those drives, using secondary cloud services to ensure fire or flood doesn’t screw us, only to think that 99% of the time those files are as good as dead to us?
Julian then asked, when did this all change? In the good old days of tape we used to record, mix, master, take the money and then hand over the tape to the client. If it got left in the cab home, wet, melted, or lost, then it was on the client, not the studio.
It’s a fair question. When did it become the responsibility of the studio to keep stuff in archive on the odd chance the client might want to remix their single for the 20th band anniversary?
We Asked The Experts
We decided to extend the question wider to the Expert contributor team and asked them what they do when it comes to archiving client work. The answers were varied, but some have a common theme.
Mixer and producer William Wittman;
I’d MUCH rather hand clients the ‘reel of tape’ equivalent back and be done.
But in these days of expected instant, perfect, recall, it’s not unheard of to hear from a client 3 months later “needing” isolated keyboard parts for a live show or tracks for a remix or another look at an edit for a single and so on.
So it depends on the client. If they can be relied upon to lay hands on and send you the ‘reel of tape’ back when they need something then that’s the best option. It should be their responsibility.
But with some clients that’s just, sad to say, unrealistic.
Gareth Young, owner of Cube Studios in Cornwall;
We have branded 64gig usb sticks that we insist the client buys and takes it away once session signed off . They are mostly receptive to the idea and it takes the pressure off who’s responsible for the archive
I think the longest time was 13 years someone asking for their files and getting annoyed when I said I don’t have them anymore!
LA based Post mixer, Phil McGowan;
I have a 40TB synology setup that backs up to Backblaze where pretty much everything I’ve done is archived. Mostly it’s for me, in case I want to reference old sessions or take a trip down memory lane thumbing through past years of projects. I’ve had clients ask me for old stuff years later and I almost always have it but I think ultimately it’s up to each client to archive their projects.
All clients should be told that if they didn’t ask for a full archive of their stuff within a few weeks of the project completion date, don’t be surprised if it ends up getting cleared off.
Producer and mixer Mike Exeter;
I keep files until it’s all mastered and then I send off the originals. If I happen to still have things archived then I’ll gladly look for something if asked politely. If not then it’s the client’s look out for not taking my advice to keep backups themselves.
Producer John Cornfield;
I inform the artist that they need to bring a drive to copy the sessions too and advise them to have several copies, then it is up to them but I do have nearly all the sessions I have ever done still on drives, I never erase anything, maybe I should but I don't, I am currently looking for a session from 2008 which was on soundscape so that is a mission but they are paying me to sort it out if possible, I have recently sent complete album session with multitracks and stems and all versions of the mixes over to LA from a session 21 years ago even though the label had exactly the same info but couldn't find it. I am way too soft but the ultimate responsibility has to lie with the client whether that is the label or the artist, I did think about offering to archive for a fee but to do it properly it is quite a lot of work and expense.
LA based post mixer, Reid Caulfield;
It’s kind of required for vendors in Hollywood. It started decades ago with physical assets. A client would send us assets and we would house them for free, knowing that when they needed more work done they had to come through us One way or the other. If they were taking the work out of house for it to be somewhere else, they would pay a storage fee for however long we had housed them. If they *were* having us do the work we would continue to house the materials at no charge. Then Studios got used to this arrangement and so they expected but happily now it’s mostly not physical assets but digital ones. And anyway, it’s more of a backups situation. Work is initiated on a primary RAID that is backed up every 60 minutes to a RAID1 (mirrored) drive set. At the end of the working day I initiate a process to do an incremental back up to AWS. When the job is complete, the job stays on the primary work drives for three months, the local backup drives for six months, AWS for a year and we archive permanently on a local removable drive. Finally a backup is kept in a fireproof safe.
New York studio owner Steve DeMott;
I tried to do the “hard drive as tape” thing. It didn’t work. Clients want to call and ask for whatever they need and then know you’re going to do it. They don’t want to keep their own archives.
For me, this is pretty standard within the first year to get asked to make TV mixes or stems for live shows from the original session.
I tell clients that I don’t guarantee archives because technology fails, but I do keep multiple copies of old work.
Damian Kearns, owner of 217 Audio in Toronto;
I archive everything and if the client has a drive it all ends up there. The only things I blow away are sessions that are archived to servers at the studios I work for. That’s on them. I’ll keep show elements on hand for future seasons but that’s it. I just recalled a film I mixed 7 years ago to output new deliverables for a client. Mercifully, everything still worked well, I still have all the plugins. I probably hit my archive 4-5 times a year. I hear I’m doing a sequel to an indie film I mixed three years ago. I’ll be pulling that session to cull sound effects. Very handy to have an archive. Nothing is ever truly over in tv and film. Archives are everything. I once spent three weeks archiving DA88’s for 100 episodes of a series I worked on and that archive I created is still being drawn upon to this very day, ten years later.
So it seems that many professionals take archiving seriously, but on reflection think it’s unrealistic for a client to expect us to be responsible. Especially if the client isn’t paying for their projects to be stored indefinitely.
When Is A Backup An Archive?
It’s reasonable in the digital age for us to keep back-ups of work, especially work in progress. It’s not unreasonable for a client to expect us to take care in case of a data failure. For example, you are half way through a project and the drive fails, you lose all the work up until this point. That would be bad and any client would be pissed at you losing all their work, so trying to prevent that being the case means making backups both locally and to the cloud.
However, once the project is complete and the client is happy and you are paid then the transaction changes. If you continue to keep a copy of the project for any length of time then that is becoming an archive. Should a client expect you to offer that service and if so are they willing to pay for it?
Should You Have A Written Policy?
We decided to Google to see how many studios included this subject in their policy, granted we didn’t Google all day, but it wasn’t easy to find such a policy. One we came across was a studio based in WALLINGFORD, CT. USA by the name of CHEAPSK8 STUDIOS, a somewhat ironic name in fact, considering they were one of the only studios who had thought about this and included it in their terms and conditions, this is what they say;
It is advised for every client to provide for digital file storage backups. There are several ways to do this:
1. Purchase a dedicated drive that audio/video and session files may be stored on.
2. Bring your own clean studio compatible drive(s) to the session.
3. Purchase blank compact discs or DVDs from Cheapsk8 Studios, LLC for archiving any files that may have been originally stored/used on an in-house Cheapsk8 Studios, LLC drive.
We strongly advise that you buy or provide a second drive for backing up all important files in the event the primary drive(s) in use should fail for any reason. This should be done throughout your studio session. This is similar to backing up any important data files in any business, typically on a daily or timed basis as many software programs automatically do, to hopefully be protected if anything were to happen to the primary storage or use of such data.
Again we strongly advise you to maintain a backup storage solution for all important files. Cheapsk8 Studios, LLC will not be responsible for any losses of data during use or during storage of any such files. Cheapsk8 Studios, LLC recommends you instruct the recording engineer to backup your data at close intervals throughout your session to your secondary back up solution such as a second hard drive
We advise you to then take your storage media/device(s) with you upon your departure from the studio session. Cheapsk8 Studios, LLC assumes no responsibility and makes no representations either express or implied regarding safety and replacement of any hard drives, master or other audio/video files, or any type of recordings left at the studio. Again, we encourage you to take your file storage media/device(s) home with you as we do not warrant or guarantee the safety or functionality of such storage devices.
There’s more information on their website
As with all things in business, if it’s not written down then you are asking for trouble when it bites you on the ass. Our advice is to make sure you do something similar to Cheapsk8t studios and have a clear policy for your clients. The policy should make clear who is responsible for the data and who pays to keep it safe.
Archives - Our Advice
It’s clear that not everyone is clear about archiving client work for any length of time.
Our advice is;
Have a policy about data backup and storage that your client is aware of before commencing work.
If you are not going to offer an archive for your clients then inform them and make it clear that they need to be responsible for all content after the work is completed.
If you are going to offer an archive for your clients then work out the time and cost required and charge your client accordingly.
Finally, take nothing for granted, ensure you and your clients are aware of how their data and content is handled. Ignoring this challenge is not going to make it go away, if you get it wrong it might bite you on the ass.