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Instant Live Concert Recordings
WebGangsta writes "The AP is reporting that there's a new device out that allows you to record a concert... legally. It works because it's run by the venue, direct from the mixing board. After the show, concert-goers visit an on-site kiosk and purchase a 128MB keydrive (which may or may not be proprietary to the system). Then they swipe their credit card again to download the concert they just attended to the keydrive. The MP3 can then be shared with whoever they'd like (no restrictions on copying the show to friends)." We've had some previous stories about a different system with CD-R's available after the show.
Depends on the band really. Some bands like The Greatfull Dead used to let you hook right into the mixing board to record the concert...which is why there are so many good Dead bootlegs out there.
I think Phish lets you do this also...and others. But then again, this may be a thing of the past.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Why are concert recordings illegal? Is it like taping a movie at the theater?
Yes.
But it wasn't always illegal if it was for private use. An ancient concept called "fair use" would allow many people in the past to record things for their personal enjoyment. Allas, such a thing no longer exists according to official sources such as the RIAA, the MPAA and the US Congress.
TW
Lots of groups do. etree and etreenews are two good sites to look at for information about trading.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Pearl Jam has been doing something very similar for at least two years. My wife and I went to a concert here in Denver. Afterwards, we hit their web site and ordered the concert recording. We were immediately able to download an MP3. Later, we received a CD featuring the same concert with cleaned up audio.
It's a shame no one's giving PJ credit for this awesome idea.
--AC
Sounds awful. Most bootleggers (of the legal variety, I do not consort with thieves ... erm, yeah) would rather pluck off their own ears than listen to, let alone pay for, a crappy mp3 concert that they had been to live.
I've been active on etree, StG, and similar for years, and before that I traded hand to hand. General rule (not of thumb, it's just a rule): if it's compressed, it's crap. We don't want it, and we don't want it to propogate. Because, assuredly, some dope will take his mp3 keychain, and pop it into Nero or whatever they have these days, and print out his own CD. Which will then be traded, and there will be a very sub-standard concert floating around.
"What we were seeing is that a large number of people were taking their CDs home and ripping them to MP3s, so we thought it would benefit music fans to eliminate that middle step," Reilly said.
First of all, I've learned never to trust anyone else when it comes to encoding audio. Secondly, if you can download the concert immediately afterwards, there's obviously no quality check step to make sure everything came out okay.
128M for 110s of recording time comes out to approx: 160kb/s. Totally unacceptable for live concerts.
First off, it's "Jerry".
Secondly, there are other bands that do this: Pearl Jam, the Allman Brothers, and I'm pretty sure Phish, among others.
Because concerts are performed for paying customers, you can't re-distribute a concert for free due to copyrighted content being performed live. Unless the artist, tour promoter and record company all agree that a concert can be distributed as a "bootleg" without proprietary consent, it's essentially akin to going on P2P servers or taping a movie - you're taking intellectual property without consent, which is a crime.
I did this with Metallica. At Live Metallica you can buy and download any Metallica show on their current tour. They have FLAC versions too, and I was able to get the show that I was at. They even have CD labels and case liners and stuff in PDF form. Pretty cool.
Despite all the sturm und drang over DRM'ed concert releases being the next big thing on the horizon, at least one band ignored the DRM bandwagon. Barenaked Ladies used the resources of their promoter Nettwerk (and not through their record company) to release MP3s of each concert during the first leg of their tour this year. You can download any of the bunch direct from their web site, for $13.99. What complicated, strings-attached scheme do they use to transfer the music? That's right, a friggin' ZIP file. Pay your money, pull down your concert, enjoy the MP3s. I'm proud to say I bought two of their shows, one I personally attended, and a second just because I heard other fans rave about the particular show. Trust us, RIAA, and we'll keep you wealthy with products like this. Don't treat us like friggin' thieves.
RW
How about a CD with CDDA audio?
Same quality. Sure, FLAC can fit 2x as much audio on a CD, but consider the number of CD players out there that play CDDA but not FLAC.
Better yet, how about 192kbps Vorbis?
And about this MP3 "crap":
In double-bind studies, self-proclaimed "audiophiles" were unable to tell the differece between a 256kbps MP3 (CBR, encoded with FLAC) and the uncompressed CD.
Now, of course, you don't want to transcode from one lossy format to another (or to another bitrate, for that matter). That's the true advantage of FLAC.
Congratulations on being the 1 millionth Slashdotter to completely misunderstand the concept of "fair use."
"Fair use" doesn't mean "I think it's only fair that I get to copy and use this." Fair use is a statutory defense to a charge of copyright infringement that is available primarily to those who use a portion of a copyrighted work (not the entire concert, program, etc.) for educational or journalistic purposes, and is especially effective when that use is non-commercial. Fair use protects your local t.v. newscast when they show you a 30 second clip of the band playing at your local arena, or when you quote some of the lyrics to a song in a review. It does not protect you wanting to make copies of CDs for your friends or taping entire concerts without the permission of the artist.
Phish has a system for this, and they have had it going for at least a year now. Plus, you can get it in either mp3 or lossless format (FLAC).
They do not tether DRM either, and still allow for audience to tape the shows with special taper tickets. Those can be freely traded, but the ones Phish provides is an honor system (what? a band that does not assume that their fans are out to rip them off? Someone call the RIAA)
This is already possible for some bands. After going to a Primus show recently (Tour de Fromage). I was able to pay to download the entire show as either flac or mp3 from primuslive.com. Also, for truly free live shows of less popular and often more talented bands at the Live Music Archive over at archive.org.
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.
Every concert Metallica plays is available approx. 4 days after on www.livemetallica.com for $10 US. You have the option of downloading MP3 or flac and includes cover art!. I downloaded a concert recently and was impressed, although James Hetfield voice was a little to prominent. Go figure, I download all there songs from kazaa, but paid for the concert. But the money I paid for the concert probably goes to the band, so I don't have a problem supporting it. Rich
Whats your Favorite song or artist? YourFavMusi
In double-bind studies, self-proclaimed "audiophiles" were unable to tell the differece between a 256kbps MP3 (CBR, encoded with FLAC) and the uncompressed CD.
Hydrogen Audio - many people there will say differently
Great idea! That's what we do. ;) I'm involved in a startup called
Listen Digital that's getting into
both online distribution of live shows and onsite CD burning. We've
got a store called Download Live
Music that lets artists sell downloads of their show online right
after it's over.
Basically, we're a bunch of guys who are sick of the whole top 40 shit and sick of the fact that a lot of great artists aren't able to support themselves in mainstream distribution channels. The main thing that we're interested in is creating a new form of production and distribution that's viable for local bands local bands who have great live shows and a dedicated fan base but haven't made it big yet, not just the Phish's and DMB's.
This USB keychain idea is going to be a fad. People going to check out small bands aren't going to want to drop $30 to get a recording of it, and even at larger ones, as geeky-cool as having a USB keychain with the band's logo on it may be, it doesn't have the same wide appeal of a high-fidelity CD recording with customized artwork. Quality-wise, unlike the uncited claim that 192 kbps audio is indistinguishable from CDs, there are plenty of studies that show otherwise.
I know this is modded as Funny. I also know that someone is bound to do something like this. However, I've gotta ask: How does anyone win at this game when people have attitudes like this? Damned if you use DRM, damned if you don't. $10 for a digital recording of a concert I just attended is a very reasonable price to me. I think they have the right price point here; at $15, I would consider it somewhat expensive.
I'm not trolling here; I really would be interested in some /. opinions here. Because digital media can be pirated at near zero cost, all it takes is a couple of people to completely destroy a new technology. Personally, I think this is a really cool idea and would hate to see it sunk this way. It sucks to admit, but DRM is inevitable. The innate greed within people will always exist (both the suits who want to squeeze every penny and the vast majority of the public who wants everything for free, ethics be damned).
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
"Copying CD's doesn't introduce loss. " Many many many errors can be introduced in the extraction of an audio cd. It is not loss in the sense of the loss of frequencies you get from mp3 compression, it is more an issue of dropped samples and skips and blips. Rip a scratched cd with a gereric [not EAC] ripper and see what happens. It's not loss, but it still sucks. There is a reason a lot of people trade FLAC/SHNS as opposed to audio discs.
i saw the baby, and the baby looked at me
No, he was right. Letting audience members hook into the sound board is indeed a thing of the past. Phish banned this not because it competes with the soundboard recording that they sell (they weren't doing that so much at the time) but because of incidents where people who were taping directly from the board would touch things on the board they shouldn't or otherwise messed things up. When recording the show threatens to get in the way of the people at the show's enjoyment, then it gets stopped. Phish stopped allowing people to patch in in Fall 1990. Nowadays, there's enough security in venues and around the soundboard that it wouldn't make sense. Audience recordings are obviously still legal. In fact, a lot more bands explicitly allow them now than in the past, due to the success of bands like phish and dave matthews (ugh), and the growing popularity of trading shows, now that computers make it so much easier. At one time, the shows would be recorded on DAT, and then people would have to copy analog tape copies for each other, often trading my mail. Now, most tapers I see record directly onto a laptop and then the shows are put up--often the next day-- as bit torents of losslessly compressed audio (for example, go look at http://www.sharingthegroove.org.
Also worth noting is that virtually no major bands(except Pearl Jam) allow video recording of their shows.
Btw, was anyone else at the (phish) shows in vegas two weeks ago? Man those were sick.
I'd rather be lucky than good.