Currently, all the master copies of the episodes from the original run are being held by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. They were donated by Tad Low, the creator of the show. Although master copies are known to exist, they are not publicly available due to licensing. […] With the sheer number of episodes produced, the fact that both runs of the show are no longer rerun on VH1 or MTV Classic, and the fact that the show did not receive many home media releases (apart from a 1999 80’s-themed VHS / DVD) due to licensing issues, episodes of the show are very hard to come by. The only way that episodes can be found is through home recordings of the show from when it aired.

  • Hobart_the_GoKart
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    7 months ago

    The music is licensed by the record company. If a distributor wanted to release all the episodes on an official home media (streaming, blue ray, etc), they would need to pay for the rights of the music. Each. Song. And they are all hits so that’s big money. The cost to license this music would outweigh any benefit of release the home media. Hence the issue, no one wants to go through that headache. It won’t be resolved until the songs enter the public domain (70 years minimum).