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?"

Comments

Clear Channel

[Znonymous Coward]

is not a radio station company... They are an advertising company that happens to own every radio station in America. It's a shame.

Technology gives - and technology takes away

[mickwd]

It's only thanks to technology that there is a "recording" industry in the first place. Before performances could be recorded, musicians had to make money through performing their works. Technology, and the ability to record music, created the recording industry.

Is it too surprising, then, if technology might take it away again ?

In my personal opinion, music is about many things.......creation, art, emotion, enjoyment, life. If there is one word which doesn't belong next to the word "music", it's the word "business".

Re:Technology gives - and technology takes away

[ackthpt]

Is it too surprising, then, if technology might take it away again ?

I don't see how the technology would take it away. On the contrary, this is a serious threat to the goons who make up the RIAA, as it does two good things:

Artists get paid for their work, directly, bypassing the RIAA hands. Particularly a good thing for bands who don't want to sign bloodsucking contracts and already have established a following.

Fans get live recordings of the show they went to. Man, how many times have I attended a show and thought, "Gosh, I sure liked they way they played x, but their 'live' mixed album in the store isn't anywhere like that. I would pay $$ to get this show on CD)

The only way I could see this being any kind of victory for the RIAA goons is if artists sign a contract which requires their concert proceeds go from the promoter to the RIAA goons and what few cents are left come back to them.

As always, advice to musicians, get your own lawyer to explain terms of a contract to you before signing.

Re:Technology gives - and technology takes away

[ackthpt]

the only problem with what you are saying is that recording the shows has to be ok'd by the artists. most artists don't allow recordings of their concerts.

I've always assumed that's because they'd prefer to sell you their old albums or the booklets full of promotional pictures. That's the old business model.

a lot of the reason for that has to do with their management and the RIAA. i don't think artists or the RIAA would ever allow a complete third party to record their shows and sell them without getting all or most of the money.

Largely due to restrictive contracts. Again, the old business model. A new artist who doesn't allow that language into a contract has complete freedom to sell recorded performances. I've seen many a bar band sell their own studio recordings. Assuming they recorded a particularly good live show and offered it for sale, nothing prevents them from doing so.

and i don't think clear channel would be overly willing to give all or most of the money away, unless we start to see a major increase in concert tickets.

Tickets have nothing to do with it. If Clear Channel wedges this door open wide enough, those artists who have the clout, are independent, or otherwise are unfettered, this will be the direction music goes. And you can bet the RIAA is paying attention to this, as it is far more damaging to the fat cats than small independent recordings.

Don't fall into the trap of believing the old business model is going to survive no matter what. It has to change because consumers expect more, and when consumers and artists are given the avenue you bet the power of the RIAA will errode fast.

This is not piracy

[afidel]

This is the instant selling of a live album. Recording a live concert was never piracy as long as you got permission (ignoring that the band may not have the proper rights to the songs, those might belong to the label or songwriter)

Paying for Poor Quality

[fobside]

Why would anyone want a CD of a live concert with music and vocals that are really done live. Almost every "live album" you can buy in stores has been redone. Basically, you would get inferior quality music.

Plus lots of bands record with extra instruments that they don't use when they play live. Those are often added in when they make the "live album" for sale.

Note the word official

[MyNameIsFred]

How will the RIAA react to this, seeing as this is legitimizing one of the oldest forms of music pirating?

Note the word "official," as long as the Clear Channel concert contracts have this stipulated as an option, it will not be an issue. Heck, RIAA will probably like it because now they can get a cut unlike the unofficial bootlegs. I also note this is not the first mention of this. I can't find the press release now, but another group recently mentioned that concert goers would be given access to a website to download mp3s of the concert. Within a couple of weeks of the concert they would receive a professional CD of the concert.

Re:Note the word official

[jms]

I guess we can now revoke the legend of how Phish promotes free distribution of concert recordings.

Nope. Phish still allows tapers to bring their own equipment, and allows them to freely distribute the recordings made from the audience.

What they are doing is selling official soundboard releases in parallel, under the usual conditions of commercially released albums. This has absolutely no affect on the making and noncommercial trading of audience tapes.

As a matter of fact, Phish had a taping rule that said that when they released an commercial release of a show, you weren't allowed to distribute audience tapes of that show. They removed that restriction at the same time that they started offering soundboard downloads, so the new system is actually less restrictive.

NO complaints here. Phish is doing it right. They are distributing the music in lossless SHN format as well as MP3, and there's no DRM crap to mess it up. What more could you want? I have no problem with it not being free, because hopefully the cash will provide enough of an incentive for the band to continue the program for the rest of its career.

As far as Jerry Garcia, I'm sure he would be perfectly happy with the arrangement. After all, the Dead put out lots of commercial albums of live concert recordings -- Live Dead, Europe 72, Steal Your Face, etc, and Deadheads never had a problem with buying those albums instead of copying them amongst themselves.

hmm

[SnAzBaZ]

How will the RIAA react to this, seeing as this is legitimizing one of the oldest forms of music pirating?

Excuse me? Bands have always sold CD's and merchendise at concerts without involvment from the record company - and many bands explicitly allow fan recordings of the concert. Is this just some shameless attempt to bring the word "RIAA" into the post to increase it's chances of getting posted?

Doesn't take anything special

[jarrell]

All you need is a huge rack of cd-duplicator machines... You can buy boxes that you just drop the cd into the top, and a stack of 5, 10, even 20 drives immediately clone the disk. I've even seen some that clone the disk, then drop it into a disk printer. Since concerts generally have the same order, you predo the jewel case inserts, and pre silk-screen the blanks. Record off the mixing board onto a digital source, and immediately burn to a master cd, and drop that into the first duplicator. Then burn another, and drop that into the next duplicator. If you bring a truck to the concert with all that stuff pre-racked and powered, you could easily start churning out a couple of hundred cds every 15 minutes or so.

The recording process will benefit because..

[i]

..of the law of KISS ! (Keep It Simple Stupid)

Because of the hurry You must have a simple microphone config.

Because of the hurry You can't process/"adapt" etc the sound to very often inferior levels the usual CD-recording deps use to do.

Because of all this it will often result in a more dynamic and unfiltrated music.

Sic!

Stupid questions... better reasons

[ggruschow]

This is great for nostalgia and instant gratification.

How will the RIAA react to this, seeing as this is legitimizing one of the oldest forms of music pirating? Don't know. Don't care.

Also, what kind of equipment will have to be used to produce these so fast?

Uh, a couple cables running from the stereo outs on the mixing board to the line in on a decent PC? Then, after the concert, perhaps a few CD-R drives? The biggest issue would seem to be any editing to get it below 80 minutes, but half-decent audio engineer can trim that stuff down quickly, or they could just do 1 hr shows, or just sell the end, or whatever.

Will the recording process suffer due to the hurry?

Duh? Popular musicians typically sound much better with multiple takes and processing. Some artists are good enough that it's not a big factor, and then of course anything that's improvised (*not* Britney Spears) is different each time.. Possibly better in many people's opinion.

The real killer for an individual live recording for me is sheer nostalgia. I've been to performances that I simply loved. I'd love to take them with me for the rest of my life to listen to and remember back. I've got recordings of a couple of these, but most of them are now lost.

Of course, for most pop artists that are aiming to do the same set every time (aside from "Hello New York/Chicago/Milwaulkee/Seattle/LA!"), just buying the "Live" CD released 6 months afterwards is accurate enough, but still doesn't offer the immediate gratification of buying it as you walk out the door.

Plus, a good performance, as opposed to great, often fades in goodness over time, as your 12 year old mind shifts from Britney to Justin. Selling it immediately will likely milk the cash cow more efficiently. Even better, a lot of those little 12 year old suburbanites can afford to buy the single, the album, the poster, the trapper keeper, the lunchbox, and multiple live recordings.

Legitimizing, or undercutting?

[rcoleman15]

Is this really "legitimizing" unauthorized piracy, or an attempt to undercut it? If you could be guaranteed to get a "professional quality" soudboard recording of the show (i.e. little crowd noise, no hiss, etc.), why even attempt to sneak in recording equipment of your own? IF this works, it could be another revenue stream for the artists involved (thus sating the RIAA, possibly). Their shows are being recorded anyway, why not release good quality recordings (a la Pearl Jam) and beat the bootleggers at their own game?

RIAA and Clear Channel

[hairylarry]

The labels will have to pay Clear Channel for the privilege of bootlegging the concerts or Clear Channel won't play their bands on the radio.

equipment needed

[ibennetch]

All you really need to do this is to split each of the signals, run it to a seperate sound board, the output of which feeds either a computer or stand alone CD recorder. Then you just get a huge pile of cd-r media and racks of cd duplicators...[near] instant copies. Not hard and can be done rather cheaply -- the biggest cost would probably be the duplicators -- we've got a 1x7 that runs at 24x that cost over a grand, as I recall -- you could easily get 20 or 30 thousand in duplicators.

This will work

[puppetluva]

I did a consulting gig with ClearChannel a few years ago and a fellow consultant suggested this to them then. There are many reasons this is a good idea:

1) Artists own their own performances. This is the reason why Record Labels don't really make money off of concerts. It is up to them and their artist representation as to what they do with their recordings of them.
2) CDs distributed at street-level and concerts are an effective form of promotion - one that is very effective. . . The Wu-Tang Clan and The Grateful Dead know this cold and they did great even though they NEVER got airplay. (CCU is diluting their radio prowess a bit here - but don't thell them that).
3) Music has a great "hook" into your memory. How many times have you heard a piece of music and it reminded you of some past situation when you heard it? How great would it be to have the EXACT rendition of that concert and the good time your friends had? Bill Graham (the famous San Fran concert promoter) both understood this and encouraged it.
4) If you love a band (say RadioHead), and you go to more than one of their concerts (say MSG and Philly Spectrum), wouldn't you like to buy them both if they were unique experiences? How about a digital season's pass (over the web) to ALL of their concerts? (with video). Would you pay the equivalent of a box-set to have that kind of access? I would. . . most people would for their favorite band (if they have the coin).

The sky is the limit with these opportunities and there isn't much that the RIAA can do about it. This is the kind of liberation tha technology makes possible. . . There is more value because there is more PRODUCT. There is more product, because there is more access to the ARTIST. Let's hope this catches on before the Label's start asking for exclusive rights to concerts and concert-proceeds.

Re:Given that live music is the best music...

[derF024]

e-mail tela@livephish.com. they respond to all messages within 48 hours.

i emailed them about this almost 3 weeks ago and haven't gotten anything back about it at all. i use the site exclusivley under linux and i've bought 2 shows from them in the past. i refuse to buy anything from them as long as that notice is up. (and i really do want to buy some of the newer shows)