Universal Music Group has promised “transparency” a week after news broke that master tapes had been destroyed in the 2008 fire.

In an email to staff seen by the BBC, Universal Music Group’s CEO Sir Lucian Grainge said that “the loss of even a single piece of archived material is heartbreaking. We owe our artists transparency. We owe them answers.”

He added that initially, he was “relieved by early reports from our team that many of the assertions and subsequent speculation are not accurate. … Even though all of the released recordings lost in the fire will live on forever, losing so much archival material is nonetheless painful.”

When the fire broke out on the studio lot, Universal had initially downplayed the resulting damage. The New York Times released a report just last week, revealing that over 500,000 master tapes had been destroyed.

Read the full story on Ultimate Classic Rock.