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Out of interest, what FLACs can you buy commercially and where?

http://livephish.com

Isn't the fact that it's "good, free, and open" the exact reasons the publishers wouldn't use it?

Depends on the band. For instance, I haven't bought a CD version of a studio release from Gov't Mule in quite some time. They offer MP3 and FLAC for purchase right on their own website.

Phish even sells what they call "FLAC-HD" versions. These are 24 bit/96 KHz versions of their live shows.

Not to mention, these, and hundreds of other, bands allow people to tape and distribute copies of their live shows. Those recordings are FLAC as well, often higher than CD quality.

But yeah, haven't heard of any artists releasing in it...

http://livephish.com/ -- not actual "releases" per se, but official soundboard recordings.

The iTunes music store is not needed to use your iPod. I have filled my 20gb iPod and have bought MAYBE 10 songs from iTunes. The rest were from CD's that I own or concerts that I downloaded (fan-recordings) or purchased (sound board recordings). Those 10 songs I bought could have just as easily been purchased on CD Albums or Singles. So where does the monopoly come in?

If other online stores want to sell music that works on the iPod, they can sell standard MP3's (like http://livephish.com/), and they'll work just fine.

Phish had the following setup during their 21+ yrs:
1. Audience members were free to tape any show.
2. Audience members were allowed to copy/trade and recording that they made and freely share it by others so long as no profit was made in the exchange.
You can read their Policy if you want the nitty gritty...

It's a fantastic way to get people to listen to your music - they never had a top 20 hit but were one of the top grossing concert acts in the country for several years.


In their last few years they also started putting soundboard copies of the show on http://livephish.com/ and allowed downloads at $10/show (FLAC or MP3) - and all profits go to charity.

A wish more acts had this kind of insight to believe in their fans.

Stephen

I love sites such as http://livephish.com/ or http://livemetallica.com/ because they offer lossless FLAC downloads. Not only can I convert this into whatever the best format my portable player will play, but I am guaranteed that in 10 years I can do it again without quality loss. I will not purchase music online unless it is the same quality it would be if I purchased it in the store, and is of course, discounted to reflect the mininimal distribution costs involved with online distribution.

Agreed, especially with the need for CD quality. On reason I'm happy to shop (occassionally) at livephish.com is that they give me the option of buying flac and doing whatever I want with the files.

Live phish. Some other bands hand similar services now as well.

Well if you like Phish you can download good old fashioned DRM-free FLAC files at livephish.com.

No, CC are claiming they own the patent to the process of a venue taping the concert, and selling CD's at the merch stand after the gig. Thus "Instant Live CDs"

I think bands like Phish have done similar things but i'm not sure if that site would be prior art (they're not selling the discs AT the concert - but a day later online)

I'm glad they do this.

Phish lets you do things a number of ways. You can buy a taper's ticket, which allows you access to the taper's section. Here you'll see a sea of microphones and DAT recorders. This is for the real phans, the sound quality isn't great.

The second option is Live Phish. You can download shows roughly 24 hours after they've performed. Both MP3 and FLAC available (though FLAC is a bit more expensive, due to bandwidth). Each show is recorded directly from the soundboard mix, also comes with a setlist and cover to print off.

It's a great service, and it's being widely used by Phish fans, and personally I'd LOVE to see this for every show I go to (Bowie on his latest reality tour... A CD of that would've been gold). So this latest scheme is nothing new, but kind of overcomplicates the issue. But this is definitely the way of the future.

Phish allows you to purchase/download the FLAC recording of the show a day or 2 after

Phish allows you to pay to download either mp3s for $9.95 or FLAC copies for $12.95 of their shows. I don't believe there is any DRM either.

Also, for those of you who want lossless music, and for no cost, check out archive.org

These people go and solicit permission from bands to post their recorded live content. There are tons of bands listed, and everyone should find people they like in there. It's not britney spears or michael jackson, but instead, its quality music.

You have to click on the Live Music Archive link to find what I'm talking about. Here is a list of the bands and links to all their content online.

Go check it out. FLAC and SHN songs everywhere. I keep them on my local hard drive, and any time i need to burn it to a CD, or MP3 CD, or to my portable mp3 player, I have automatic scripts which convert it and transferrs the data. LAME 128kbps ABR mp3 for my portable flash player, LAME Recommended VBR mp3 settings for CD-R MP3 disks for my in dash car player, and translation to .wav for audio CD creation. Someone could write a python program with drag n drop functions i'm sure, one probably already exists for this purpose. It could all be by the click of a button. Then any mixed CD you can imagine are at your fingertips at the quality you preferr depending on the media you want to carry it on. Lossless music archives are the way to go.

For those phish phans out there, archive.org decided to not post their content. But I would recommend to go to LivePhish for
$12.99 soundboard and mastered recordings of their live shows in MP3 or FLAC lossless downloads. No DRM included :)

There are other sites with lossless non-DRM music. But these are my favorites. Everyone should check this shit out ASAP!

the industry will never move to a solely downloadable medium. you will always be able to buy albums, whether they be cd's, dvd-a, sacd, or hdcd, you will always be able to wlak into a store and buy a hard copy of what you want, at least for the rest of most of our lifetimes. the industry is very much anti-change in that sense (which is not necessarily bad). i don't consider paying for mp3's of songs getting the same song as i would on the cd. it's not the same, it's lost some of the quality in the compression. can you get shn or flac (the only major lossless compression schemes i can think of) from itunes? i doubt it. so the point you made can be completely rejected by just that. mp3 and wma seem to be the only major forms of audio compression that you can pay for (unless you do the live music downloads from bands like phish, who offer mp3 or flac to download and burn copies of their shows).

my next major point is that you say 90% (and admit that it's not a fact, which is good) of music buyers don't give a shit about other people's opinions of music. go to any concert for a major touring (touring means bands that constantly tour) act and talk to the people there. they'll all be talking about other bands they heard play at smaller clubs or other big shows they've seen recently. most serious music listeners (which make up a lot more than 10% of the music listening audience) want recommendations. while they might shop at chains, they don't go to places like best buy or walmart to buy their music. they go to music/record store chains. at those places, you do get a relatively knowledgeable staff. while they might be kids and be younger, they are into music and might be able to point many adults in the direction of good newer music they might like in addition to their classic rock or whatever it is they like. mall stores like fye won't be a good place, but tower records generally has a relatively knowledgable staff.

word of mouth popularity will never suffer, look what it has done to a whole lot of bands.... phish, string cheese incident, grateful dead (back in the 60's and 70's), etc all grew in popularity solely because of word of mouth. what major radio stations play any of thsoe bands (with the exception of the dead since they're now on classic rock stations). finding obscure albums and artists has always been tricky, and even if you only go to independent stores, you still might not find it. if you know the record company, you will have a much easier time finding it and will be able to get it ordered. digitizing all cd's will never happen, maybe those released by major record labels, but not the indie labels, which does not make it easier to find the obscure artists.

and as far as 8-tracks and cassettes and vinyl going out of style, no one knows where technology will lead. there will always be some better sounding medium, and right now, there's a transition to dvd-a and sacd. in fact, a lot of newly released albums and re-released old albums are being released as hdcd to offer dual compatibility. better sounding hdcd players can play them and regular cd players can as well. so that argument is gone. there will always be some hard medium that you can buy albums on. i don't think in the next 20 years that the industry will move completely away from it. there are way more constraints than you think. first is the album art, which a lot of people want, and it's not that easy to make a nice jewelcase booklet from jpeg's. even printer technology hasn't made it affordable to print them out perfectly.

so while it's easy to say that the majority of music listeners is the dumb teeny bopper kids that listen to britney and nsync and blink 182, it's definitely not the case. in fact, it's very far from the case. while the majority of teenagers listen to that crap, there are quite a few who don't, who want more out of music, who care about all the stuff i pointed out. add those to the older listeners (which you would be surprised about their tech-savviness) and you get at least half of all people who buy music, probably more.

I cant see companies offering downloads in lossless format anytime in the near future

Well there's always Live Phish, they offer DRM free .flac downloads :)

-sam

Now most people will start clammering about how the majority of music buyers can listen to 128kpbs aac, mp3, etc, but the people who spend a lot of money on stereo stuff are also the same people who buy the most music. The only pay music site I've seen that caters to audiophiles is livephish.com which offers NON DRMED audio downloads available as a low bitrate mp3 or for audiophile's lossless flac at a higher price. For a music service to truly reach all potential customers it needs to provide multiple quality levels for consumers with different needs.

It seems like I learned a long time ago that if you ZIP/RAR/etc a WAV or AIFF, you get a file not much bigger than the associated MP3.

As an example of what I stated before, LivePhish.com sells both MP3 and FLAC copies of the concerts they offer. The FLAC files cost a little more due to their size and subsequent bandwidth costs.

The Dead always got it - they made far more money touring than by selling records. Letting fans record concerts and swap tapes created a lot of good will and good publicity.

Phish also gets it. They have always let fans tape and trade their shows. In Feburary of this year that launched a website (livephish.com) where you can buy and download a soundboard recording, in MP3 or in FLAC, of the entire concert for $9.95 (MP3) or $12.95 (FLAC). The recordings are posted within 2 or 3 days after the concert. The online catalog lists every concert they have done so far this year.

In July there was an article in, I think, the New York Times where the Phish web site manager said that the site had had over 1 million sales. Do the math. This is from a non-mainstream band. When was the last time you saw Phish on MTV? Think about this; Phish played 2 nights at The Shoreline in Mountian View, Ca. Both nights were sold out. The Shoreline holds, I guess, 30,000 people. Using this web site they get to re-sell the concert without splitting the proceeds with BGP (Bill Graham Presents) and TicketBastard. Do you think the music industry is missing something?

Simmer down there Lennon. The Record industry still makes a profit off of iTMS-sold songs, so for your purposes it is not an alternative. In fact, you're only real option is to download and potentially hurt the artists or to listen exclusively to small-label or unsigned bands/artists. Oh, and then there is Phish, but I have a feeling that they aren't really up your alley.

Why not simply, DON'T BUY CRAPPY MUSIC/MOVIES? Don't buy them. Don't buy the soundtrack to a crappy movie. Don't request that "one good song" on the radio. Don't encourage them. Don't download them either. When the RIAA has nobody left to blame but their own damned selves, then they will change the game. If you don't want it, you don't have to buy it. Remember that.

Phish sells FLAC downloads on LivePhish.com. Hundreds of artists have free music available at The Live Music Archive or Furthurnet. If you want reasonable access to music, patronize artists who haven't sold their soul. Besides, mp3 is old technology. Ogg does it better and is free.

Phish tried to let people redownload shows. They found people were using the site as a virtual hard drive, and downloading shows repeatedly. Bandwidth was through the roof, so they cut it down to a 48 hour window. Though if you emailed the webmaster and explained your hard drive took a crap, they'd probably let you redownload the show(s).

Take a look at Phish's online music site. They offer everything in both 128 kbps mp3 and, for an increased price, a lossless FLAC compression format. Thus, they offer a product that is indistinguishable in quality from a regular CD, but those who can't hear the difference/don't care can get their music cheaper and easier.

Live Phish

What are Live Phish Downloads?

Live Phish Downloads are an extension of the multi-CD Live Phish series launched in October 2001. As with the CDs, the downloads feature complete, unedited, mastered shows from Phish's extensive archives. The download format is a natural progression for the serious collector and the new fan alike, offering an opportunity to listen not only to older shows, but to shows from a current tour very soon after they've happened, mastered directly from the soundboard.

How much does it cost?

The price of each show is based on format and length. Each show is available in two formats: MP3 (standard) and FLAC (premium). Most shows are two sets, but some (like New Year's Eve for example) are three sets.

What do I get?

After completing the purchase process you may download the entire show in the format you've chosen. Individual tracks or sets are not available as separate purchases ?you may only purchase shows in their entirety. For those who wish to burn the shows to CD, we have created printable PDF files for the CD labels, booklet and tray liner.

Current music services, with the exception of Livephish.com do not offer high enough quality to appeal to audio enthusiasts, the same people who would be likely to spend the most amount of money.

Can Hollywood change? I doubt it, so the onus is on the public -- the music buying and movie buying public -- and the artists who particpate in the new technology like Phish and Pearl Jam. If the fans support musicians who have embraced technology, then Hollywood will change. Now, don't get me wrong, they will change only when they see they can get a buck out of your pocket.

I've seen at least a dozen post in these Apple Music Store stories telling people that ask if they can download a song again to backup (complete with bold font to show their superior intellect).

Who has the time to do these constant backups of all the random crap on your computer. I try hard to keep copies of stuff like tax records, but I don't backup my music collection or other random junk.

Apple should allow people to download the songs again that they've already purchased. Live Phish allows you to do this. Maybe there is some DRM issue that makes this difficult, but, otherwise, I don't know why they wouldn't allow this.

-prator

PLEASE NOTE: LivePhish.com is optimized for Internet Explorer 5 or later. You will not be able to register or purchase or download shows with the web browser you are currently using. Please come back and visit us with Internet Explorer.

I'm using Mozilla 1.3a, a very standards-compliant browser. Phish should hire smarter webheads; form-based registration and downloading are quite "baked" technologies and should not require a specific browser.

LivePhish.com

My interests on music lately have tended towards full-show live music by a few bands. Recently, as featured here, Phish started their Live Phish Downloads series. I ended up ordering the New Year's Eve run, and those were usually available within 24 hours of the show, but they were so huge that downloading them was a minor hassle.

Now Pearl Jam is expanding their already ridiculously large live bootleg series with the upcoming Riot Act tour. The .au/.jp tour bootlegs will be sold online, but a few hours after the show, they will also be making those concerts available for download to those who purchased the CD (which would be available about a week or so later).

But this is exactly what I've wanted in all of my concert-goings. While I have some reservations since it's got the Clear Channel name attached to it, I've been to a few concerts that were just mindblowingly good and wished I could have a CD of it to listen to again the next morning. I'd definitely go for something like this.

This has been going on since 12/31/02 with Phish. They started by releasing all of their New Year's run (Madison Square Garden 12/31, Hampton Coliseum 1/02 - 1/04) about two days after the show. The copies weren't re-mixed, it was just the soundboard guy's mix of the shows. Of course, Phish makes you pay for it, but it's much less money than a CD costs - the three-cd shows run around $13. They're also going to release their entire winter tour in the same fashion. Fans are excited about it, and I think it's definitely a step in the right direction, a way to have further control of their own "intellectual property," however false I believe that term to be. livephish.com

this is already done by several bands. pearl jam was the first that i know of to do this. they have been releasing a series of live shows from their archives. the who did this with their last tour. they would release the live recordings a few weeks after the shows. the entire tour was done taht way. the string cheese incident has their "on the road" series, same thing as the who with the current shows being released a few weeks after they happen. the greatest band in the world, phish, has done it completely differently. they have a live phish series, releasing shows on cd from their archives, but they also now have live phish downloads. this is a way of getting the shows out to people within 2 days after the show by way of download. they release them in a lossless compression format (shorten) and they even include printable jewel case inserts and cd labels for people who label their cd's. it's a pay per download thing, but the risk involved is huge since peopel can just trade these shows openly even though phish does not allow that in their policy. they are very proactive in enforcing that as they have removed their band from furthurnet because people were trading the downloaded shows there.

so this alraedy does exist for many bands, but a lot of bands aren't even worth listening to live unless you watch the show (britney, nsync, etc) because there's nothing different about the music except they do a little dance number with it.

Not sure if it is the one you are talking about, but Phish recently started selling concert downloads at LivePhish.com.

How about, say, Phish - who sell their own CDs of concerts at LivePhish.com?

if you go to http://www.livephish.com you can get a copy of the concert in .mp3 or .shn (loss-less compressed sound format) form for $10 or $15 respectively. Pretty good deal for 3 CDs worth of music if you like 20 minute long random jammings that sometimes includes vaccum cleaners as an added instrutment. They just started this since they got back together. Oh and there is no copy security feature to the mp3s or shns, they go by entirely by an honor system. Definitely a cool feature for those who want to grab the concert they attended.

Perhaps they got the idea from here:

http://www.livephish.com/

While recording and releasing a concert quickly is not a really difficult thing to pull off, selling CDs at the venue immediately after is a bit more difficult.

Phish is already offering all of their new concerts online. They record every show to a 48 track setup, any, and they've been releasing concerts off of their soundman's reference DATs. The sound of those discs is pretty good.

What they do now is send a clone of the DAT off to the people running their website, who transfer the show, chop the files up, compress them and put them online.

However, to be able to sell discs right after the show, those doing it would have to bring in an awful lot of CD recorders, all hooked into the soundboard feed. I would imagine quality control would be a bit difficult for a couple of reasons. One is all the discs would be running live. Another is it's difficult enough to set up a good distribution amplifier setup for the large number of CD burners that would have to be used, much less one that is portable. I also don't see how they could offer discs "five minutes" after the show, seeing as it would take longer than that to unload and case a few hundred burners.

There are a lot of good reasons to try it, though. There are a lot of people out there willing to pay for recordings of concerts, as evidenced by the healthy bootleg industry. A few artists (Pearl Jam, String Cheese Incident) have done decently selling limited pressings of entire tours. The Who offered CDs of all the shows from their last tour for sale online. This seems like a good deal for distribution as it won't take up a lot of rack space in the stores, but the shipping costs can get expensive. There is also the impulse-buy factor. Bands or promoters could get a lot of extra sales, I think, selling a disc of the show as a souvenier before the concertgoers even leave the building.

In short, I wouldn't be surprised to see this in the not-too-distant future. It is possible to get better than bootleg quality out of this type of record and release program, but it won't be as good as the typical major label live album, but then again, they also wouldn't suffer from the overproduction and editing that those often have. And there is a lot of money to be made here.

...with their recent Holiday run. The New Year's Eve show was available for download one or two days after the concert as either MP3s or SHNs (lossless compression see Etree for more on the common formats). The price was reasonable ($11/$14 depending on compression) for the equivalent of three CDs of music. The cool thing is that they still allow tapers to record and trade the shows, you just can't trade these sanctioned downloads which presumably sound better. It's a very cool idea though.

Phish is already offering such a service. They even offer MP3 ($9.95 per concert) or SHN (non-lossy) file formats ($12.95 per concert). They are slowly compiling an archive of downloadable media for all their concert recordings, as well. How ya' like dem apples?

A lot of bands with a history of allowing taping (greatful dead, phish , DMB). Now phish is selling all 2003 concerts. They're in both mp3 and shn formats. The SHN format costs more (more bandwidth)..

The have a good FAQ which answers the age old question ...Why should I pay for when I can get an audience recording for free?

They Might Be Giants also gives away tracks on the internet. Better than the dial a song, which used to give away free songs over the phone.

Contrast this with the FooFighters annoying extra track download feature which doesn't work with Mac (Windows Media) and uses a special program which seems to check if the music cd is in the drive.. I like the band but that experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

The bottom line here is that creative bands can have alternative music distribution. This is good, unless your band is already signed, then the label can object.

A lot of bands with a history of allowing taping (greatful dead, phish , DMB). Now phish is selling all 2003 concerts. They're in both mp3 and shn formats. The SHN format costs more (more bandwidth)..

The have a good FAQ which answers the age old question ...Why should I pay for when I can get an audience recording for free?

They Might Be Giants also gives away tracks on the internet. Better than the dial a song, which used to give away free songs over the phone.

Contrast this with the FooFighters annoying extra track download feature which doesn't work with Mac (Windows Media) and uses a special program which seems to check if the music cd is in the drive.. I like the band but that experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

The bottom line here is that creative bands can have alternative music distribution. This is good, unless your band is already signed, then the label can object.

as described in this article this is not unlike livephish nearly-instant Concert selling website.

To add to the pricing meme...
I don't really think I mind a new release being $18. What burns me is seeing older, not-very-popular music sitting there for $16. Give us a better trade-off...instead of the store being filled with $16 cds and a small little bargain bin of true crap (usually) being $10, why not the whole store at less than $10 and a small "promotion" bin at the front with the latest and greatest at a premium price?
That should satisfy the "stupid teenage girls with large parental pocketbooks" who want to feel like they belong, as well as those of us with patience...or just a different agenda...personally, I like to own cds and would love to play "catch up" in the jazz world, but it isn't economically feasible for me, or for the stores to shelve every single record ever produced.
Enter the internet distribution model. But, come on, there are people out there (me!) who don't "do" mp3! Gimmie my FLAC or SHN and I'll even pay a little more.
Like this! Add a couple bucks for cds, case(s), paper and ink, and it's $18 for 3 discs (each around 70min). I consider that reasonable. I wish they'd taken the next step and released their latest studio album that way!
The! Yahoo! account! must! be! affecting! my! use! of! exclamation! points!!