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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.
...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.
$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!
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.
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.
(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'
If I went to a show and it was good, I'd definitely pay $10.00 to download a digital copy of it.
:)
But if you are half drunk and trying to work some kiosk, you'll probably pay $40.00 for a copy of a terrible show, perhaps even accidentally paying for it twice as you fumble around with the keychain while trying not to spill your beer.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
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.
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 may be so, but, it might also make a great souvenir, especially if it had the bands logo on it. Then, you could put the concert on your computer, or wherever else, and still have a handy USB drive/momento. Even if they allow people to use their own drive, there could be those who prefer the "Jon Bon Jovi Still Rocks (he swears) Tour" memorobilia!
It's good to see that people are trying to embrace technology instead of fighting it. It's not a crime to try and make a buck, but lets see some innovation! Let's some value added, and incentive. !