An old acquaintance of mine and I recently met up. The master to his only major label release was destroyed in the Universal fire of 2008. He still gets a statement from MCA Universal. They are telling him that he still owes them money.
I suggested that he asked for a buyout amount and that they give him the masters in exchange. He did. They dropped his buyout amount to about 25% what they said he owed them (maybe because he was going to pay it all up at once, I don't know exact details). I suggested to him to ask them to write off the account because his paperwork refers to owning the masters. Since the album was never put on CD, there's no hope for for a pristine reissue. The album was in the cutout bins within a week or two of being released. So it's not like there's going to be a lot of these records out there in perfectly mint condition somebody to capture...
This guy's story, along with ones like Little Richard not getting his money and Badfinger getting ripped off, it was very enlightening about the record industry. Fortunately, I learned it before I was out of high school.
