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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.
If you could go home and log onto the Maxwell's website and pay to download the concert, regardless of the length, it would be better than being half drunk trying to work some kiosk. If they only want to make the downloads available to ticketholders, they can put an unique password on each ticket that allows the purchase of only that concert.
If I went to a show and it was good, I'd definitely pay $10.00 to download a digital copy of it.
The keychain thing is an unnecessary gimmick and won't last.
There is no god
...I'll be the one with the CD duplicator selling blank CDr's for $1 each.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
Why are concert recordings illegal? Is it like taping a movie at the theater?
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
paying for the CD and then ripping it myself. Amongst other things, I'd have the hard copy (or at least harder copy) in a theoretically uncompressed format.
$45 for a T-shirt, $8 - Coke, $500 - for a Pen drive - showing your friends you can't manage money....priceless
Sig removed by order of FBI Patriot ACT
If artists get a cut (more than the RIAA approved 1%) then I'm all for it.
If, on the other hand, it's artists only chance to make real money getting fucked over by yet another greedy corp (in this case Clear Channel the venue owners in a lot of places), then it's a bit much.
Beep beep.
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!
As soon as they'll let me purchase a CD with FLAC audio instead of that MP3 crap, I'll think about it. Until then, me and my D7 have a lot of work to do.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
For bands I've seen in smaller bars and clubs, I can't tell you the number of times I bought their CD (usually self-published) on the way out if I had a good time (as well as how many drinks I knocked down =D )
It's certainly smart to present the concert goer with the ability to make an impulse buy, right after they're coming off the high of enjoying a great concert ...
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.
I was awakened recently to the posibilities of these flash drives. When they first came out, the small sizes limited their practicality. Now with the larger size devices, they are actually very useful. While not cheap, you can get them in sizes of at least 2gb.
At 2gb, it's getting close to carrying around a DVD which acts like a floppy, and is just as portable.
This concert thing is a great use of the technology. I think these are going to eventually be wildly popular for many different uses.
Soccer Goal Plans
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.
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.
(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'
Wow, it still amazes me how many people don't actually read the article. When's the last time you saw an MP3 with DRM?
Also, a lot of bands are prefectly fine with recording bootlegs and sharing them all over the place. This just lets your average joe who might not know anything about taping a show get a soundboard copy of it.
I've always liked the term write-only. I'm pretty sure the poster meant "write-once", but it's just one of those ideas I find wonderfully useless.
Actually, I just burned a few el-cheapo CDRs that were apparently write-only, 'cause I couldn't read them afterwards.
This is an intelligent use of technology to make money. It has a clear means of income (buying the memory stick) and sells a product of superior quality (over holding up a tape recorder).
Whether it succeds or not will depend on the consumer... but I think this is a good effort.
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
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.
-- source, the liner notes for 1994's B'Boom live album.
In other words, it really depends on the venue, when getting a "Front of House" (FoH) mix. The guy mixing the sound for the PA is aware that he's hearing the on-stage monitors and amplifiers as well as the PA, so guitar and bass sounds tend to be quieter, and drums can be quite hollow.
When this mix is your only source, it can be devestating to the recording when looking for something that should be more professional, like the Dixie Dregs concert on the Steve Morse DVD, where the mix cut the guitar to almost nothing because Morse keeps a rather loud on-stage amp stack.
Arena and Stadium gigs aren't as affected by this as club and theater shows would be. Then again, bands that can afford to do stadium shows can afford to have a second mixer on site producing a high-quality recording of the show independent of the FoH mix.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
As long as i remember myself liking Iron Maiden, i always loved watching them live, and if possible have a recording of the gig either mine by Minidisc recording, or other bootlegs that are essential for a Maiden fan. A while ago the boys decided that there is no reason of not recording a live performance (audio/still picture/no video)and share it wisely/widely, as long it won't be sold as "official" merchandise, so naturally lots of us fans loved this. Now i'd love to see this happening in future gigs, not only because of the sound quality superiority (the gig is recorded straight from the mixing panel and not from some ambient/un-acoustical/dead spot you happend to be while recording). Just Imagine a 666/Eddie USB keyfob loaded with the gig you just enjoyed...How cool is that....
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
Read my post: Bands (MOST bands) and their management ARE NOT going to allow this. USE YOUR HEAD.
Also, a lot of bands are prefectly fine with recording bootlegs and sharing them all over the place."A lot" and in a lot of alturnative-non-commercial-still-puttin'-out-vinyl bands. Tha's fine. But any band you plunk down $35+ to see, ain't going to happen.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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.
That's right. Until now you could only get instant recordings of pre-recorded concerts. Now, with our cutting-edge "live concert" technology you can get instant recordings of live concerts.
I think it's time to get a new retarded monkey to write the headlines. This one's busticated.
-Peter
It's cool that the venue is doing this, allowing for more artists to participate instead of forcing the artist to set up their own distribution network. But as several people have mentioned, Phish, Metallica, Barenaked Ladies, and several other big name bands allow anyone to download the concert from their website for paying a fee. The good thing about those is they all have loseless formats. Usually either SHN or FLAC. But why bother with the mp3 digital memory stick? I know that the Pixies are releasing all of their shows for sale (limited release numbers) immediately after the show ends. There are several companies providing the CD-R option. So why waste time releasing the mp3? Admittedly its much cheaper to set it up for a single kiosk than to buy 200 cd burners to get the shows cranked out as soon as it ends. But once it gets releases, most people in the live music scene, www.furthurnet.org, www.sharingthegroove.org, www.etree.org, www.archive.org, etc, won't touch mp3 sourced shows with a ten foot pole. So the mp3 way may be a great short term option, but in the long run, it doesn't make much sense to me. Anyone care to point out benefits I fail to see?
Not good enough. The 128MB drives should be included with an 80% discounted ticket, and everyone who records the concert should get a free roast beef sandwich.
Remember, anything that can be copyrighted should be free, and anyone who tries to make a living writing, singing, performing, doing research, directing, producing, engineering, editing, designing, painting, sculpting or building should be driven out of business and live in a cardboard box until they throw away all their education and experience to find another line of work.
I hear they're building a new Wal-Mart soon.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
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.
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
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.