The Largest Multitrack Music Collection Ever- -... May 2026

By the 1990s, ABKCO had amassed over 150,000 reels of tape. Today, that number exceeds . The Anatomy of the Archive To visualize the largest multitrack music collection ever assembled, you must imagine a fortress built for a paranoid audiophile.

In the 1960s and 70s, Allen Klein negotiated contracts for some of the biggest acts in the world: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles (via Apple), Sam Cooke, The Kinks, and The Animals. When labels went bankrupt or artists fought for ownership, the master tapes often fell into a legal gray area. Klein’s strategy was simple: Secure the physical assets. The Largest Multitrack Music Collection Ever- -...

Because these tapes allow for remixing, surround sound upmixes, noise reduction, and the rescue of damaged recordings. Without the multitrack, history is locked in amber. With it, history breathes again. The Collector: The Man Behind the Tapes The architect of this monumental archive is Jody Klein (though depending on recent acquisitions, similar claims are made by the Iron Mountain Entertainment Services vault and private collector Glenn Korman —but for the purpose of this deep dive, we are focusing on the largest singular coherent collection recognized by industry archivists: the ABKCO Music & Records vault ). By the 1990s, ABKCO had amassed over 150,000 reels of tape

However, you can hear the collection. Every time you listen to the 2019 remix of Let It Bleed , or the 2023 Dolby Atmos version of "A Change Is Gonna Come," you are listening to a digital clone of a tape pulled from this vault. The largest multitrack music collection ever assembled is more than a warehouse of plastic and rust. It is the sonic equivalent of the Rosetta Stone. In those 250,000 reels lies the truth of how music was made: the missed cues, the magic takes, the studio banter between songs, and the half-second of silence where an engineer lit a cigarette. In the 1960s and 70s, Allen Klein negotiated

To maintain the largest multitrack music collection ever assembled, the facility runs 24/7. Technicians "bake" tapes at 130°F for 12 to 24 hours to evaporate moisture. They then have a 72-hour window to digitally transfer the tape before it re-absorbs humidity and degrades again.

Owning the physical tape does not always grant the right to release the music. Most of the collection is under "pending rights reversion." For example, ABKCO holds the physical multitracks for early Rolling Stones material, but the rights to release those recordings are negotiated separately with the artists' estates.

Under the leadership of Jody Klein (son of legendary manager Allen Klein), ABKCO has amassed a collection that rivals that of the Library of Congress. While Universal Music Group holds massive archive, the largest multitrack music collection ever assembled in one contiguous, climate-controlled space is widely believed to belong to this independent entity.