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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?"
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".
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.
...where everything is lip synched anyway.
Well, most of the time anyway.
I can only imagine that the RIAA would squash this one, since traditionally, there would be all sorts of copyright issues here. Royalties go to the Label, Producer, Studio, Artists, RIAA, and who knows who else. Beyond that, a lot of the great artists play cover songs and unreleased material, which they'd have to cover royalties or permissions for that.
However, I would say that I'd pay for concerts of a lot of bands. People like BNL, Dave Matthews, etc. that throw some of the best live shows on earth would be worth it. Of course, since this article implies that you have to attend the concert, and the RIAA has little sway there, this is something that benefits the artists (and Clear Channel).
This would be great, if you can afford a ticket or get a chance. But what about the people in South Dakota that never see anyone, or people overseas who can't make a concert?
If this is something that the artists support, it would be easy to have the recordings ready. 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.
However, since this looks like something they're going to start in club shows, I'd imagine it's meant to boost new and smaller artists, which is great. I've seen enough small bands that never even crossed the radar of most radio, and it would have been great to hear their sets again.
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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What about selling these CDs to customers who did not attend the concert? If my favorite musician is coming nowhere near my town, can I buy one of these CDs? I own all the albums of my favorite groups, so there's just nothing left in the music world for me to buy. Offering these concert CDs for sale to anyone would entice a lot of people in my position to purchase some new music.
as described in this article this is not unlike livephish nearly-instant Concert selling website.
http://www.somebaudy.com
Obviously, there will be no post-production editing or enhancing, so you're basically just buying a fancy bootleg, not a CD you'd buy from a store of a live performance. But it shouldn't suck too bad, and it'd sure beat holding up a mini-recorder in the crowd.
(probably a moot point, as I can't see the RIAA letting this happen - unless they're getting a healthy chunk out of the pie.)
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)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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.
This is a great idea. I would love to buy a CD of the concert that I just experienced. I think everyone who's ever attended a concert and seen all of the audio production going on has thought why the concert producers couldn't do something like this. Being able to take an actual piece of the concert away with you would add a lot of value to expensive concerts.
However, bands would have to worry about concert sales. I'm sure that a couple of hours after a concert ends, all of the audio would be all over the net. Would this effect record sales?
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Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
...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.
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.
The actual accounting (also reported in countless previous links) means that after the studio's self-declared expenses are deducted, the band not only rarely makes much beyond the initial advance, but often ends up owing the studio money on paper. This can lock them in, forcing them to sign for additional albums (to have the debt forgiven) and making it hard to switch labels.
I could enumerate many more abuses, but I'm sure others will -- if they're not sick of doing so.
NOW COMES THE EVIL PART
The studios (or RIAA) don't have any right to the music the musicians play in concert, unless there is a specific concert recording clause. This was the meat on the musician's table. but now the largest promoter in the nation will be making it a term of their contracts that bands must surrender most rights to the music in their precious live performances. Note: Clear Channel never said a word about paying artists. It's be a condition of the concert: "If you don't sign over the rights, you don't play in this town". [We've also seen plenty of articles on the strong-arm methods Clear Channel has used to build and enforce precisely this sort of monopoly.
This won't improve anything for most bands. It only applies to the known successes where Clear Channel expects to make a profit; the ones where CC is already profiting as the concert promoter. If Clear Channel didn't book you for a concert or performance, don't expect their audio truck.
In short: they are reaching deeper into the artist's pockets -- and removing (coopting) a potential source of revenue for the band itself. The recording industry was a historical artifact, like buggy whip makers. It gained its stranglehold because 100 years ago, musicians could not afford studio equipment. Now they can, so the strangle hold much be maintained in other ways.
This is a coerced corporate seizure of the band's rights to the proceeds of their own live *performances* (concerts, shows, etc.) which had been the last bastion of the musician. They are doing this preemptively, because it's now a small step from the club/concert audio feed to a burned CD -- and right now sales of such CDs could well belong to the musician, if the corporations are not careful!