Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Instant Live Concert Recordings

Posted by michael on from the instant-gratification dept.

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.

2 of 373 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wait, that was illegal? by ScottGant · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  2. MP3 concert on 128M keychain? by lambent · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.