Edwin Outwater, a thirty-year plus veteran of the entertainment industry  in technology-related areas such as archive restoration and management, format standards negotiations, studio management and quality assurance, started his career in the music business with MGM Records as a recording and mastering engineer in 1970. He moved to Polygram in 1975 when they purchased MGM Records, and was put in charge of the reorganization of their archives which included, among other priceless assets, the original MGM Movie Musical soundtracks (Annie Get Your Gun, Showboat, Singing in the Rain, etc.) the entire Verve Records archives and the work of some the early country music giants such as Hank Williams Sr. and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Ultimately, he directed the entry of these assets into an electronic database (one of the first in the industry) while at the same time acting as the re-mastering engineer for some of the early Verve re-issue anthologies. Ultimately, he was responsible for the move of the entire physical and electronic archive from Los Angeles to New York.

In 1978 he moved to Warner Bros. Records as Quality Assurance Manager, working directly with artists, producers and mastering engineers to secure final approval on each project before manufacturing. In his subsequent twenty years at Warner Bros. his titles were; Director Quality Assurance, Studio Manager of Warner’s renowned Amigo Recording Studios, VP Quality Assurance, VP Engineering and Quality Assurance and VP Technical and Engineering Services for Warner Music Group.

He was Chairman of the Warner Music Group Manufacturing and Quality Standards Committee for ten years, and Chairman of the RIAA Engineering Committee for five years. After leaving Warner, he was retained as a consultant by DTS (Digital Theater Systems) the digital surround sound supplier for movie theaters, and then hired by them as VP Music Operations, where he remained for two years.

Archiving and entertainment asset management have been the main focus of his work from the beginning, and he has combined the experience gained over the span of his career with a thorough working knowledge of the latest technologies available to maximize the value of archived entertainment assets. He is the creator of the Entertainment Asset Management Conference, a comprehensive forum designed specifically for the review and discussion of digital asset management as it relates to the entertainment industry.

Most recently his main areas of concentration have been electronic music delivery, digital rights management, and digital archiving. He founded Xepa Digital, LLC, a studio services provider specializing in restoration, migration and high resolution digital capture of priceless rich media assets belonging to major entertainment companies such as Universal, SonyBMG and Warner Bros. and EMI.

Xepa Digital, LLC was acquired in 2007 by Iron Mountain, the world leader in secure data preservation, including the rich media assets of major entertainment companies. He currently advises them (and others) on issues involving marketing, business and relationship development and strategic planning as related to entertainment asset management.