MAAS - The Media Asset Archiving System for Universal Music

The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Beeld en Geluid) in Hilversum preserves 70 percent of the Dutch audio-visual heritage. With around 700.000 hours of television, radio, music and film, Sound and Vision is one of the largest audio-visual archives in Europe.

For years the probably most outstanding music preservation project was treated like an industry secret. A high level of technical excellence was developed to digitize the unique master tapes of the world's largest music company. In 2009, arvato digital services took over the responsibility for the entire archive of Universal Music Group International. arvato digital services is now opening this preservation services. This preservation technology will become available for other high value content owners as well. With this move Cube-Tec can now provide an insight view of the Universal Media Asset Archiving System (MAAS).

arvato digital services assuming responsibility for MAAS

arvato digital services, leading provider of integrated media solutions is now assuming responsibility for the archive project at Universal Music Group. The Universal Music Group owns the most extensive catalogue of music in the industry, which includes the last 100 years of the world's most popular artists and their recordings. This cultural heritage needed to be transferred to the digital domain, in order to preserve the material for future generations. In 2009 arvato digital services and Universal Music signed an agreement on cooperation for this large-scale project.

arvato digital services assuming responsibility for MAAS

Cube-Tec's technical director Joerg Houpert spoke with Wolfgang Martens from arvato digital services about recent developments in this archiving project.

Wolfgang Martens said... »The cooperation between arvato and Cube-Tec started 2002 when the first AudioCube with its advanced mastering- and restoration tools has been installed at Sonopress. Since this time we have a good relationship and we enjoy the short way to the manufacturer and the direct communication to the Cube-Tec support engineers. When we moved the Universal MAAS System from Hanover to Gütersloh we knew that we would obtain the audio ingest system with the most sophisticated quality control. We have a great confidence in that system because of our good long-term experience with Cube-Tec.«