InfiniteFileLife, from ADIC, is a digital archive system that will
enable Sony Music’s assets to outlive the media they are stored
on
The musical legacy of a century
Sony Music, Inc. has several recording labels including Epic,
Legacy, Sony Classical and Columbia. In addition to producing and
marketing works by its current artists, Sony Music owns the
Columbia/CBS Records archives master recordings, album covers and
images of artists from the world's oldest recording company. A
catalogue of the archive, which contains over 400,000 recordings
and more than half a million images, reads like a history of
20th-century music.At the inception of the project, many of the old
master recordings and images were in a state of severe
deterioration, and as for the more recent artifacts, it was only a
matter of time. "There is no such thing as media which last
forever," says Sony Music's director of Technology, Malcolm
Davidson. "Accepting that philosophy, we asked ourselves what
characteristics we would need for a system of checking the quality
of the media over time, of cyclically testing them to see if
they're failing, and replacing the media before the quality of the
sound or image deteriorates." Davidson and Marc Kirkeby, director
of Archives Development for Sony Music, embarked on a pioneering
quest to put together a digital archive system that would enable
Sony Music's assets to outlive the media they were stored on. When
Sony spoke to ADIC, a technology called InfiniteFileLife was talked
about.InfiniteFileLife was originally designed for storing
petroleum-exploration seismic surveys and national-defense
archives; applications with strict requirements for the
preservation of data because future data analysis depended on the
availability and high fidelity of the collected data. ADIC's
InfiniteFileLife allows systematic monitoring and timely
replacement of media with secondary copies, or complete transfer to
newer recording technologies. The ADIC Automated Media Library open
architecture and mixed-media capability guarantees that future
recording technologies can be easily integrated into the system.
Because InfiniteFileLife extends the life of data past media shelf
life indefinitely, it was critical in Sony Music's choice of
ADIC.
Asset preservation and asset access"The two keys to
what we're doing are Asset Preservation and Asset Management," says
Davidson. The two efforts are intertwined, because each of the
million-plus items preserved in the archive must be readily
accessible for the regular quality checks. Asset Management,
enabled by a database and browser, and storage management software
provides reliable, easy access.The archive has been online since
August 1996, with work proceeding in the preservation of the oldest
and most-deteriorated masters as well as the recordings of the most
popular artists. "For our current artists, it gives them a feeling
of safety and comfort that their work is being preserved. However,
we do not know what will be deemed valuable a hundred years from
now. And I mean, artistically valuable, not just financially
valuable. So it's an important point that we are archiving
absolutely everything."
The special problems of preserving
intellectual propertyBy definition, intellectual property is a
creative work independent of the medium on which it is recorded.
There is a high likelihood that organisations preserving
intellectual property will have multiple media formats to store.
Over time, hardware and software obsolescence may exacerbate the
problem of access to the material. Creative work stored on original
media may be hard to catalogue and unwieldy to store and retrieve,
thus it is subject to loss. Added to these are the problems of
security and protecting copyright.Fortunately, the audio and visual
works of art may be transferred to new media indefinitely. With
proper care, no nuance of the original work is lost, all will be
available, year after year and decade after decade. That is why the
concept of InfiniteFileLife applies so well to intellectual
property preservation.
The Sony archive configurationSony
Music is actively archiving both music and images. Audio recordings
are digitised at a studio, then loaded onto removable hard disk
drives for transfer to a "load station" workstation in the Music
Archive department. Images are digitised in the Art and Graphics
department and loaded onto a separate "load station". Each of the
load stations is connected via FDDI to the Silicon Graphics'
Challenge series server, which archives the music and graphics
files to the ADIC AML/E nightly. AMASS software provides ADIC
archival storage management. Sony Music's digital audio archive
system includes a Silicon Graphics Challenge DM class server
connected, via SCSI, to an ADIC AML/E Automated Media Library.
AMASS software from ADIC manages the archive file system and
directs the actions of the AML. This configuration reflects the
project's concern with reliability and quality for the long run,
and meets Sony Music's standards for accessibility and
preservation.Also vital to the system is a long-term growth path
because Sony Music expects its archive, once fully established, to
continue to grow at a rate of 1-2 per cent a year. "This project is
a dynamic, living thing. We're constantly evaluating the need to
upgrade and to purchase new technology," says Malcolm Davidson.
According to Davidson, the ADIC library's modular, expandable
construction, its open architecture, and its hardware and software
compatibility made it the best choice for archiving a
potentially-unlimited number of assets and ensuring future
accessibility to them. Sony Music's current AML/E library was
delivered as a five Terabyte system, and is expandable to hundreds
of Terabytes simply by adding more media storage capacity. AMASS
software provides direct access to the library, as if it were a
single large magnetic disk drive.The AML/E Automated Media
Library's open architecture allows integration of drives from ADIC
and other vendors, including future technologies. The Sony Music
library has the potential to mix media in the same library. So, for
example, a mixture of tape and optical media may be
supported.Sony's digital asset management system was developed with
the help of the ADIC Integrated Storage Solutions Team, which
provided system engineering and integration services such
as:Technical requirements analysisComputer systems sizing,
configuration and tuningCustom software definition and
developmentAcceptance testing at the factory and at the Sony Music
siteA single responsible source for the total archive
solution
Compiled by Geoff Marshall( 1999 Silicon
Graphics, Inc.