Hyper Recording

The other night at the Red Hot Chili Peppers show I noticed a bunch of cameramen with super high end video cameras right in front of the stage recording the show. And then I noticed thousands of people with cell phones and digital cameras doing the same thing.

And a thought popped into my mind. The super high quality video that was being shot either by the band or with the permission of the band may never see the light of day. But the video being shot by the audience was going to be up on Flickr, YouTube, Google, etc within hours.

Earlier this year I asked a friend of mine in the music business about a business plan I had gotten. I don't want to go into the details of that plan here (confidential is confidential), but my friend in the music business said to me "artists will never allow recordings of their live shows to be released without their permission and they aren't going to allow much of it to get out with their permission because they won't like the way they looked or the way the sounded that night".

And that is why so little of the live music that is played every night ever gets released. And it seems the best "live albums" are really studio engineered versions of live recordings. Jackson tells me the only thing live on Thin Lizzy "Live and Dangerous" is the drums.

But the artists are quickly losing control of this. The day after the Ben Kweller show there were dozens of photos on Flickr of that show.

Audience captured video is even more powerful. Check out this stuff, all captured in the past month as Ben Kweller toured around the country promoting his new record.

Ben in a record store singing Wasted and Ready (1 min 47 secs):

Ben in Atlanta on 10/15/06 singing Walk On Me (3 min 47 secs):

Now neither of those is a particularly good recording, but they certainly captured the moment up close and personal.

I almost got my Sanyo Xacti camera confiscated by security at the Chili Peppers show. Cameras aren't allowed in the Continental Arena. But that rule is nutty because they aren't going to confiscate cell phones and the cameras (video and still) that are in cell phones are getting better every day. I bet one or or both of those Ben Kweller videos was captured on a cell phone.

We are living in a world where everyone is walking around with a camera in their pocket, increasingly a high res video camera. And in that world, everyone is a cameraman. We are witnessing hyper recording and I think its pretty cool.

Comments

[joe]

Yes, very cool! I wonder if you saw Alex Ross's New Yorker piece The Record Effect last year. In it he discusses the impact of recording on the sound and performance of music. I'm sure you'll find it interesting. That article and your post came together in a post of my own, provocatively titled the end of music as we know it. A more accurate title might have been "the beginning of music as we make it."

[steve garfield]

Check out news too:

Deval Patrick: Just Words Speech 10/15/06

Recorded with an N93 cell phone...

Here's another clip where the video was recorded with the cell phone that ended up on Rocketboom as a report:

MIT Glass Pumpkin Patch

[Nic Brisbourne]

People putting their bootlegs online will help drive music and video prices lower. The money in this industry in the future will be made from gigs and merchandise.

This is part of a bigger trend of the value moving from products to experiences. Even Microsoft, the mother of all product companies, is talking about this.

[Howard Brooks]

Utilizing user generated content from live shows is an idea that I give a great deal of thought to. I see it as a way to extend community for the artist, and as a promoter a way to aggregate an active group of fans to market live shows to.

We were the promoters for the Chili Peppers shows at Continental and I was glad to see the YouTube clip on AVC. As a general matter of course, after each show I check flickr, YouTube, technorati, etc., to see what’s been posted. From my perspective, the more fan generated content I can locate the better. I wish more of my colleagues felt the same, but I would venture to say that most don’t even realize this is happening.

There is a great tradition in the Jam Band world to allow fans to (audio) tape and trade entire shows. As promoters, this is something that we encourage by providing special sections for tapers and in certain cases we provide access to the soundboard. For the most part, videotaping is not allowed, though I think this will change soon. The posting of live video and audio clips from concerts will only help drive more fans to shows.

For most other genres of music, this situation is much more uncertain. But I think there are ways to encourage artists, artist managers, and promoters to embrace and help legitimize this trend. Encouraging fans to create and post live content, perhaps on a branded channel on YouTube, myspace or buzznet is one potential solution. The artist and promoter could monetize these channels through a share of the advertising revenue.

[jake Shapiro]

Your friend in the biz is mostly right. I know bands that had dozens of live recordings made by fans, soundguys, friends and couldn't agree about putting most of them out because of the quality and the performances. The drums were too loud, the background vocals sucked, someone is talking during the guitar solo, etc. No matter that 99% of the audience didn't notice or wouldn't care (wary artists would point out that even if a listener can't pinpoint a fault it can still affect the overall impression - something's "off"). And that was mostly just sound. When you add video you get into how everyone looks onstage, what the crowd scene was, etc.

Artists care deeply about their craft, their peformances, their choices in expression. While it might a great fan-friendly marketing strategy to embrace and promote widespread recording of appearances, it will cut against the grain for many musicians.

Perhaps a business that aggregates bootleg audio/video and then gives artists a clearing house process to permit/reject/endorse/promote the best of what comes in...

- Jake

[Gideon Marken]

>>>And then I noticed thousands of people with cell phones and digital cameras doing the same thing

Fred, I was at a small club last year, and had a similar thought. Days later, I had a diagram put together and started working on the concept. I first started referring to the idea as "Fan Blogging," but as the idea has evolved to more than just bands, it seems more like "Social Publishing" for events and locations.

As I watched people capturing video and photos, sending them off to friends, I though..."It's too bad the band isn't able to participate in this exchange of media... that it's not aggregated so that they could benefit from it."

You can check out the diagram and explanation on my blog:

http://www.gideonmarken.com/index.cfm/a/9/blog/699/part1
http://www.gideonmarken.com/index.cfm/a/9/blog/700/part2

Here's the Summary: To provide the means for an audience and/or participants of an event or location gathering to self document using photos and video from mobile devices. In addition, this system provides a greater opportunity for follow up sales and marketing through the Website which displays the user generated content. Lastly, depending on the settings, a contact list can also be generated which helps one grow their network.

>>>artists will never allow recordings of their live shows to be released without their permission

Possibly your music business friend missed "Grateful Dead" and "Phish" - two bands who allowed fans to record nearly everything. Both went on to be top grossing bands, still selling CDs, even live CDs and live digital downloads. Take a look at: http://www.livephish.com/ if more bands provided a live digital download service like this, they'd be able to generate more revenues, give the fans what they want, and provide a hub where they can sell dry goods, like shirts, etc.

A live performance is filled with opportunities to communicate with an audience, and usually, the only thing I see is people handing out flyers at the door trying to get you to visit some artist you aren't interested in. If fans published photos and video to a site, a good percentage would visit the site to see their photos/video. Some would forward them onto others, and some might even buy something on the band's site.

This idea of Social Publishing or, Hyper Recording as you've called it, should be made available next year if all goes well. I'm building it as a service of http://www.ArtistServer.com/

- gideon

[oren michels]

Some bands do post their "bootlegs" - a couple weeks ago my son and I went to hear Little Feat (and the Turtles and the Doobies with Michael MacDonald) play at BR Cohn Winery. My son's trumpet teacher, Mic Gillette, was playing with Little Feat. Mic used to be the lead trumpet for Tower of Power and recorded a bunch of stuff with Little Feat and many, many others (his site lists them all).

After the show, Mic sent me a link to a YouTube video that had been posted by the sound man. It was that day's live performance of Dixie Chicken, which featured all kinds of great jamming by the band and the guest artists (Mic's the guy in the green shirt taking the trombone solo).

Dixie Chicken video

[Tony Alva]

I wish they had camera phones when the greatest live album ever was recorded in Chicago in the late 70's. I am of course speaking of UFO's "Strangers in the Night".

Oh hells yeah!

[jackson]

It's all very interesting. Indeed, I do see a decline in perceived quality. The public doesn't care for quality, just convenience. Mobility and transferablity are what matters - sucks for me and those who care about sound - but the bands seem be surviving, and indeed thriving with the added exposure gained from Youtube and blogs.

[hello]

Fred,

I have worked with a number a major performing arts organizations going back to the early days of web casting (the early 1990's).

"...but my friend in the music business said to me "artists will never allow recordings of their live shows to be released without their permission and they aren't going to allow much of it to get out with their permission because they won't like the way they looked or the way the sounded that night".

While that's very true, depending on the genre of music, there may be separate performance and broadcast rights (classical especially). Webcasts are/were generally considered broadcasts. I've worked live performances where the webcast had to be pulled 15 minutes before the show started, due to clearances. Scary but true (and insanely costly for venue).

There's a new service (targeting the classical market), that allows the artist to review the concert recording before download distribution; downloads are available within 24-48 hours.

An example of a venue that has always done a fabulous job of gaining clearances for it's daily web casts is the Millennium Stage at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Of course, it *is* the Kennedy Center, so no surprises there :)

Millennium Stage: http://kennedy-center.org/programs/millennium/

Check out Norah Jones, before she was "famous" (Oct 3, 2002): http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/kc_video_dyn.cfm

I know of several award-winning artists that were "discovered" via the Millennium Stage.

"...And it seems the best "live albums" are really studio engineered versions of live recordings."

All I can say here is that you need to listen to more jazz and classical music. Those recording are indeed "live", without any digital meddling in the recording studio, except for a general "mix down", though some classical producers may insist on the ability to "patch". In fact, many modern jazz and classical recordings are "live", there just may not be an audience present. I'm talking real jazz here, of course, not the "smooth" noise. Here's a good description of the "live recording" process for classical: http://www.chicagoclassicalmusic.org/Ways_of_recording

Nugs.net: http://www.nugs.net/ has provided downloadable copies of concerts for years now, most concerts are available within 48 hours of the performance. Most recently the Philadelphia Orchestra has made their concerts available via Nugs.net: http://www.thephiladelphiaorchestra.com/

ArtistShare. http://www.artistshare.com/ also has an innovative business model for artists, that was "web 2.0" (fully collaborative) way back in the "web 1.0" days.

The state of current rock/pop/R&B/ "live recordings" is indeed abysmal; the earliest "live recording" I can remember with extensive studio post-production is Peter Garbiel's "Plays Live" from 1983. A great album, but the "audience enhancement" features and other post-production added in the studio are clearly audible.

[Gregg]

Fred-
Check out http://www.livefrommemphis.com for a ton of videos and live video recordings of local (and some not-so-local) Memphis acts. These guys are working hard to do what you say. Mostly Memphis garage and punk, but plenty of soul and funk too.
Gregg

[hello]

Fred,

Updating my post above with the correct Norah Jones link: http://tinyurl.com/yasrhd

Sorry for the error, I'm having a ka-razy week,

[Herman]

Paradiso in Amsterdam is already recording and storing live shows for a couple of years now. See www.fabchannel.com.
The vision is: " Re-live the show".
They are full of ideas to extend this, are making deals with the recording industry, are seeking VC investments to go global.

[EthanB]

I think Nic makes the most important point here, about how the money moving away from recordings and into gigs and merchandise...and further into other "experiential" stuff, like interactivity and ArtistShare-like involvement.

The problem for many bands I think will be the fact that THEY DON'T SOUND GOOD LIVE. I have been hearing really mixed reviews of TV on the Radio live, I hope the bad ones aren't true...they seem to be pretty good on YouTube. That would kill them.

So, one real value will be in bands that kick serious ass live. I'm working with a couple of bands on my nascent online "label" 2.0 that play perfectly in tune, are virtuoso improvisers, and in general have absolutely nothing to hide. They also multi-track EVERY live show for audio and video release. Usually FOR FREE.

This creates an absurd amount of great content and is tons of fun for the audience, which will OF COURSE be allowed to upload their own versions/experiences at the shows.

The only thing that matters is having great music. If you can tell your ass from a hole in the ground in regard to music, give up control over every last second of recorded reality, and not be paralyzed by paranoia, there is a ridiculous amount of opportunity out there.