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Instant Concert CDs?
NickRipley writes "Clear Channel (owner of every radio station in America) is purporting to offer a new service, whereby concertgoers can receive an official recording of the concert they just attended, within moments after the final note. How will the RIAA react to this, seeing as this is legitimizing one of the oldest forms of music pirating? Also, what kind of equipment will have to be used to produce these so fast? Will the recording process suffer due to the hurry?"
I worked on a production requiring this kind of speed. However, we were using audio cassettes, and the material involved was a spoken presentation that we had permission to duplicate and sell.
This is how it worked: we created a master tape on the fly during the program. At the conclusion of the program, the master was carried down to a workroom with tape duplication machines. We could have 16 tapes created within 4 minutes of the end of the presentation--with more coming. If it was this simple with analog equipment, I'd imagine a digital method for distributing these recordings would be a piece of cake.
I'm inclined to say "Great Idea!" but before I do so I'd like to know how much of this $15 would end up in the artists pockets?
If it's anything like Courtney Love's RIAA / Recording Artist math, I think it will just put more cash in the wrong pockets.
Seems like the Artists should get a higher percentage than their standard recording contract might allow, since this would be a major impulse buy on the part of many concert goers - especially considering the effect of various substances and inhibitions.
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as described in this article this is not unlike livephish nearly-instant Concert selling website.
http://www.somebaudy.com
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)..
...Why should I pay for when I can get an audience recording for free?
The have a good FAQ which answers the age old question
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.
...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.
Pearl Jam announced a few months ago that for their world tour that's about to begin this month, they'll be putting a live CD of a show on sale within a week of the show. Better yet, if you order via their website, you have the opportunity to download the unmastered MP3 version of the show the day after each show. For people that didn't already know, Pearl Jam released a concert CD for each show of their last show, around $10 from their website IIRC. Very interesting to note that if you go to Epicrecords.com, they are advertising this Pearl Jam deal in big graphics on their front page. FYI, Epic Records is a division of the evil Sony, one of the most vocal RIAA members.
"Fast burners and digital recording equipment tied into the sound system would make it easy to get these discs out minutes after a concert ends. What would be sad is that most likely, encores and bonus sets would be lost if they cut the recording early"
www.livephish.com
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
Not sure if it is the one you are talking about, but Phish recently started selling concert downloads at LivePhish.com.
Spencer Ogden
Wrongo. The mixes and equalization for the speaker feeds of a large concert are optimized to produce the best sound for the that particular venue, often with slightly different mixes going to different stacks. A traditional concert hall mix will be completely different than one for a sporting venue and neither might sound any good on a CD.
If this is anything but a zero-budget cynical cash grab by Clearchannel, a separate CD mix will be created by splitting every audio feed prior to the sound reinforcement mix. This can be done with a dedicated sound console or by creating a submix on the house console, much as is already done for the foldback mix the musicians hear on stage.
Given how much effort and extra cost would be required to do this right (second board, isolated mixdown room, racks of processing + the talent to make it work), I suspect Clearchannel is shortcutting by using a main board sub-mix sent to portable mastering/duplicating equipment owned and operated by a third party. This also puts the onus on the band and record company to insure the sound mixer does a good job making the band sound good. Clearchannel's responsibility would be to force the contracts and pocket the cash.
Morons! (and no, I won't come back, neither with nor without IE...)
Say no to software patents.