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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.
128 meg stores just over ninety minutes of 192kbps/44kHz MP3. The article says this will be mostly used for independant artists who don't care about sharing their live music, so I guess Rush, Yes, and the Rolling Stones aren't an issue. But the Grateful Dead (who I believe allow recording) couldn't fit a show on there.
Hmm... USB keys with little bears on them... or perhaps a "combination" keychain/pipe!
Don't expect something that sounds like like "At Fillmore East" or "Live at Leeds." Feeds taken from a mixing console were intended to be routed to a PA system playing at ear-splitting volumes, not a 2 track master EQ'd for home listening. Making great-sounding live recordings in and of itself is quite an art form.
IIRC Metallica were cool with people trading amateur recordings of their live shows.
(Sit back and moderate? Comment? What's a slashdotter to do...)
With all the DCMA/DRM/copyright FUD being thrown from monkey to monkey these days, it seems that some of us forget that recording a concert is not inherently illegal. There are many, many artists who encourage the taping and distributing of their live shows -- here's a list of more than 900 of them. Furthermore, there's even a P2P client dedicated to sharing 100%-legal music. That's right folks, the RIAA doesn't have anything to do with this.
Before I sit around and watch the comments pile up, there have been "devices" available for years that allow you to record a concert legally -- they're called tape recorders. These days, many serious hobbyist tapers are moving to a digital-only setup to cut down on loss of audio quality. (Wish I could give you model numbers or something, but that's what Google's for folks...)
Now, the "instant" bit of this is what's actually interesting. 'Course, you're dependent upon the venue for all this, and we know how much us slashdotters like being dependent upon stuff that doesn't smell like open-source/community-owned...
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
I have to wonder about the prices of cheap networked computers with 40x+ CD burners. For $1000, you could easily have 10 such machines networked and be able to pump out 10 CDs in about 5 minutes. This obviously isn't a solution for moderate to large shows, but for smaller bands it might make a lot of sense.
With a little extra work, those machines could each double as a cheap digital audio multitrack recorder which could have a significant value to plenty of band members who don't get to rehearse as much as they would like.
Hell, I may be blathering away my future plans to develop a marketable product. Way to go Slashdot, I blame you for my future poverty.
The only advantage I see for this is that the keychains could be reusable, but even then, the cost of a burned CD is practically negiliable assuming this service costs more than $1.
I suppose the only REAL advantage you get is that the flash devices could be gang programmed more quickly, but if you were running more than a half dozen or so high-speed CD burners, you could crank out CDs as fast as you could take someone's money anyways.
Life is too short to proofread.
... with the CD variant. The DoubleDoor in Chicago's using the eMusic service, and my friends Warmachine (Shameless plug) are in from Canada, playing a couple of shows. The quality was quite good, and at $10, the CD was definitely worth it. It wasn't advertised all too well at the venue, but I could DEFINITELY see this being a big money maker if promoted correctly.
- DRFSR
I think Phish lets you do this also...and others. But then again, this may be a thing of the past.
;)
Nothing "in the past" about it. Phish, and many other bands in the jam band genre still sell "tapers tickets" and allow recording. These are usually the obstructed vies seats right behind the sound board that suck for viewing, but near perfect for recording.
Note Phish, and others, are now competing with the tapers by selling sound board recordings on the web. They have clearly stated it is still OK to record on your own. They usually are selling a far superior product, but are OK with the competition as they realize the marketing potential. I know I have been introduced to almost all my favorite bands through the free live recordings and gone on to spend tons of money on these bands going to their shows, buying their CDs, shirts, etc..
As far as I am concerned, the Dead, Phish, etc. are decades ahead of the rest of the music industry in dealing with likes of P2P, etc. The rest of the industry should study their business model seriously, as it is far superior to the doomed "litigate your way to success" strategy they are taking now. It doesn't seem like the Dead or Phish are having money troubles
The only athletic sport I ever mastered was backgammon - Douglas William Jerrold
Oddly enough, Metallica, the former poster child of the anti-Napster crowd, has a system like that: www.livemetallica.com.
DRM-free FLAC files can be downloaded with a few days of a concert happening.
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
I was at a PJ show a few years ago, and about halfway through, Eddie started talking between songs. He pointed at a guy toward the front and said something along the lines of, "I just want to point out this motherfucker here. He's had his arm in the air recording the show the whole damn time, and he hasn't had a free arm to put around his girl. Pass that thing up here". The audience passed up the guy's recorder (DAT, Minidisc, whatever), and Eddie takes it and jokes, "This motherfucker thinks he's getting it back [laugh]" He then says something directly into the recorder, off-mike, just for the guy's recorder. Then he puts the recorder down near his feet near some speakers to get a good recording.
I'm sure that this very lucky concertgoer got an unbelievable recording when he got his recorder back, which I'm sure was right after the band spoke with the crippled kids who got to watch the show from ON STAGE.
Not only is PJ probably the best rock band of the 1990's (and 2000's, so far), but they're really great guys.
This is very true. Reasons why some people consider a Matrix to be better than a straight soundboard. You get the best of both worlds. A good Matrix can sound like you are at the concert again. (Matrix involves combining a soundboard feed and an aud recording)
It's been about 8 years since I read the relevant sections of copyright law, but this is the conclusion that I came to at the time. Pretty much everyone on the web that looked into the issue at that time had the same conclusion.
If the concert was performed for you, then you have the right to record it. However, the law never clearly specified who it was concerned to be performed for. You could make a case that the concert was considered to be performed for the owners of the performance venue. You could also make a case that the concert was being performed for the people in attendance. Either way you argued it, there would be a few lines that seemed out of place.
In the end though, the law seemed to make a lot more sense if you considered the concert to be performed for the people in attendance, which would give them the right to record it.
I also remember that the concert trading scene seemed to consider trading or giving away concert recordings to be legal, but that selling them wasn't. I don't remember where that idea comes from. It may be from the same laws I talked about above, or not...
This is great news! It's been so long since I've been out there at a concert.
But it's interesting that I've always thought that the Dead kinda killed Jerry. Sure, his years of substance abuse had much to do with it. But when you get most of your income from touring, you have this huge "machine" that is dependant on you to keep going. Jerry didn't have much time to take time off and just relax. Yes, he had money, but you also have to think of the roadies and secretaries and other people that kept the Dead going...they had bills to pay and house mortgages etc. Jerry carried a huge weight on his shoulders.
But in the end, I feel like you, that this certainly should be the wave of the future in the music industry. The Dead and Phish certainly don't rely on hit records...as the Dead only had one hit in their long strange trip.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
German industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten already do this. After the show, you can pick up a freshly-printed CD thas has been recorded straight from the mixing board.