Post by bighairygrinch on Sept 21, 2007 5:32:47 GMT -5
Music fans keep underground bootlegging network alive despite online options
money.canoe.ca/News/Sectors/Entertainment/2007/03/25/3829369-cp.html
By STEVE LILLEBUEN
2007-03-25 13:30:00
EDMONTON (CP) - While modern music fans download their favourite songs through the Internet, others continue to trade free music the old-fashioned way - mailing albums to each other through the postal service - as part of a community that stretches back to the days of Woodstock and free love.
Tape traders, self-described obsessive fans who record and trade copies of live performances from their favorite musicians, have operated since the late '60s.
One Edmonton trader has collected over 2,000 bootlegged recordings from fellow traders as far away as Denmark and Japan - which he says is only a moderate-sized collection.
"I'm always looking for that really great show when the band really jelled with the crowd," says the 39-year-old physician, who doesn't want his name published.
"We try to seek out these types of shows and collect them, as many as we can."
Artists such as the Dave Matthews Band and Grateful Dead boosted their careers by supporting the grassroots phenomenon - even going so far as to reserve sections at their concerts for bootleggers to set up their own recording equipment.
Others like Tom Waits and Bob Dylan are vehemently opposed to bootlegging and ban audio equipment outright at their shows.
Fans have recorded these shows anyway, hiding microphones in their hair, jackets or hats.
Record companies have tried to crack down on unauthorized music downloading a blatant intellectual property right infringement. Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, is currently touring the country, promoting tough sentences for those who make copies of studio recordings and copyrighted music.
When it comes to self-created recordings of live performances that are traded in smaller circles, however, the legalities are less clear.
"It wasn't so long ago that tape traders weren't a real issue because the technology didn't exist for widespread dissemination," says media lawyer Fred Kozak.
"If it was a quirky bunch of audiophiles trading copies of bootlegged tapes, even the most vigilant artists were less concerned," he says.
"If (the recording) gets into the hands of one person who takes steps to make it more readily available, that gives rise to a great harm, at least in most artists' minds."
The Edmonton music bootlegger says he hasn't heard an adequate argument against taping and trading.
"If you look at the people that are fans, if you look at my collection, I own everything these artists put out as well," he says.
And he notes that most bootleggers don't exchange money - those that do are shunned by the community.
Gabe Sawhney, 29, launched the online Canadian Bootleg Traders Index in 1995 for traders to find lists of available live recordings.
"It was a hobby, I was pretty obsessed with the music," he says from Toronto, recalling how he collected and stored hundreds of recordings from the band They Might Be Giants in his one-room apartment.
While Sawhney stopped running the index a few years ago, there are still hundreds of sites that provide listings for traders around the world.
This mailbox-to-mailbox movement is still active despite new file-sharing networks that have made finding high-quality bootlegs remarkably faster and easier.
A dozen or so websites offer BitTorrents, a form of peer-to-peer high-speed downloading of live recordings from thousands of concerts - Eric Clapton, Black Sabbath or anything in between.
These sites avoid legal trouble by posting online disclaimers that state all live recordings are offered for free and offering artists the ability upon request to opt out of making their live shows available.
Sawhney says he's never used these networks because they remove the sense of community that tape traders have developed.
"There's something about mailing tangible stuff and the wacky little twists that people put on it, like making their own liner notes, that would be lost if it was done online," he says.
"And it does seem problematic because the online stuff is being watched so closely these days."
The owners behind wolfgangsvault.com, for instance, a website archive of vintage rock memorabilia and high-quality audio recordings, are being sued by the surviving members of Led Zeppelin, The Doors and a handful of '60s-era bands.
While legal concerns are one issue, the Edmonton trader says he hasn't switched to online because he's too used to the network of contacts he's established since he began trading in 1993.
The good news, he says, is that public pressure from fans searching for music has forced record companies to react - either by releasing their own live albums of popular bootlegs or by coming up with innovative marketing plans.
Some bands, including the Barenaked Ladies, now sell memory sticks containing the audio file immediately after their live shows.
"It's a great time in music because a lot of artists are realizing that they have to release more," he says.
"I would love to own every show I've ever seen some day. I don't think the record companies will ever have a chance of stopping us."
-------------------------------------------------------
The whole thing about recording your own shows, and selling memory cards/CDs of the show immediately after, that's way cool, but would it be feasible for smaller venues?
I saw a Billy Talent gig in Manchester last September, the same place Danko Jones played in November with Gogol Bordello. Billy Talent recorded the show, and sold a 2 disc bootleg of the concert you just saw. cost me £15, was legal, and the band was supported by my purchase. they limited the number of available copies to 1000, any not sold after the show were sold through the producing company's site, which also had preorders. nice collector's item.
not sure if it's doable, because i'm not very knowledgable on analog audio equipment, but if there was a line out on say the mixing board straight to a laptop, recording the music wouldn't be too difficult with all the commercial and home user software out there, converting it to .mp3 or recording to it on-the-fly would be a breeze. then to drag and drop it onto a 256MB thumb drive would take mere seconds.
being as the record company wouldn't be involved(we all know the companies take too much), there would be more profit for the artist, and fans could take the show home with them, knowing they supported the artist by buying some of their merchandise.
win/win situation if you ask me. i have heard of some U.S. clubs that actually have done this with all the acts that have appeared on their stages, where there's a vending machine in the club where you can insert your own thumb drive to load it with the music you've just purchased, or can buy a drive from the machine and load it with the music. in those clubs the sales generated are split between the club and the artist.
so Danko, J.C and Dan, what are your thoughts on this sort of evolution of music distribution?
money.canoe.ca/News/Sectors/Entertainment/2007/03/25/3829369-cp.html
By STEVE LILLEBUEN
2007-03-25 13:30:00
EDMONTON (CP) - While modern music fans download their favourite songs through the Internet, others continue to trade free music the old-fashioned way - mailing albums to each other through the postal service - as part of a community that stretches back to the days of Woodstock and free love.
Tape traders, self-described obsessive fans who record and trade copies of live performances from their favorite musicians, have operated since the late '60s.
One Edmonton trader has collected over 2,000 bootlegged recordings from fellow traders as far away as Denmark and Japan - which he says is only a moderate-sized collection.
"I'm always looking for that really great show when the band really jelled with the crowd," says the 39-year-old physician, who doesn't want his name published.
"We try to seek out these types of shows and collect them, as many as we can."
Artists such as the Dave Matthews Band and Grateful Dead boosted their careers by supporting the grassroots phenomenon - even going so far as to reserve sections at their concerts for bootleggers to set up their own recording equipment.
Others like Tom Waits and Bob Dylan are vehemently opposed to bootlegging and ban audio equipment outright at their shows.
Fans have recorded these shows anyway, hiding microphones in their hair, jackets or hats.
Record companies have tried to crack down on unauthorized music downloading a blatant intellectual property right infringement. Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association, is currently touring the country, promoting tough sentences for those who make copies of studio recordings and copyrighted music.
When it comes to self-created recordings of live performances that are traded in smaller circles, however, the legalities are less clear.
"It wasn't so long ago that tape traders weren't a real issue because the technology didn't exist for widespread dissemination," says media lawyer Fred Kozak.
"If it was a quirky bunch of audiophiles trading copies of bootlegged tapes, even the most vigilant artists were less concerned," he says.
"If (the recording) gets into the hands of one person who takes steps to make it more readily available, that gives rise to a great harm, at least in most artists' minds."
The Edmonton music bootlegger says he hasn't heard an adequate argument against taping and trading.
"If you look at the people that are fans, if you look at my collection, I own everything these artists put out as well," he says.
And he notes that most bootleggers don't exchange money - those that do are shunned by the community.
Gabe Sawhney, 29, launched the online Canadian Bootleg Traders Index in 1995 for traders to find lists of available live recordings.
"It was a hobby, I was pretty obsessed with the music," he says from Toronto, recalling how he collected and stored hundreds of recordings from the band They Might Be Giants in his one-room apartment.
While Sawhney stopped running the index a few years ago, there are still hundreds of sites that provide listings for traders around the world.
This mailbox-to-mailbox movement is still active despite new file-sharing networks that have made finding high-quality bootlegs remarkably faster and easier.
A dozen or so websites offer BitTorrents, a form of peer-to-peer high-speed downloading of live recordings from thousands of concerts - Eric Clapton, Black Sabbath or anything in between.
These sites avoid legal trouble by posting online disclaimers that state all live recordings are offered for free and offering artists the ability upon request to opt out of making their live shows available.
Sawhney says he's never used these networks because they remove the sense of community that tape traders have developed.
"There's something about mailing tangible stuff and the wacky little twists that people put on it, like making their own liner notes, that would be lost if it was done online," he says.
"And it does seem problematic because the online stuff is being watched so closely these days."
The owners behind wolfgangsvault.com, for instance, a website archive of vintage rock memorabilia and high-quality audio recordings, are being sued by the surviving members of Led Zeppelin, The Doors and a handful of '60s-era bands.
While legal concerns are one issue, the Edmonton trader says he hasn't switched to online because he's too used to the network of contacts he's established since he began trading in 1993.
The good news, he says, is that public pressure from fans searching for music has forced record companies to react - either by releasing their own live albums of popular bootlegs or by coming up with innovative marketing plans.
Some bands, including the Barenaked Ladies, now sell memory sticks containing the audio file immediately after their live shows.
"It's a great time in music because a lot of artists are realizing that they have to release more," he says.
"I would love to own every show I've ever seen some day. I don't think the record companies will ever have a chance of stopping us."
-------------------------------------------------------
The whole thing about recording your own shows, and selling memory cards/CDs of the show immediately after, that's way cool, but would it be feasible for smaller venues?
I saw a Billy Talent gig in Manchester last September, the same place Danko Jones played in November with Gogol Bordello. Billy Talent recorded the show, and sold a 2 disc bootleg of the concert you just saw. cost me £15, was legal, and the band was supported by my purchase. they limited the number of available copies to 1000, any not sold after the show were sold through the producing company's site, which also had preorders. nice collector's item.
not sure if it's doable, because i'm not very knowledgable on analog audio equipment, but if there was a line out on say the mixing board straight to a laptop, recording the music wouldn't be too difficult with all the commercial and home user software out there, converting it to .mp3 or recording to it on-the-fly would be a breeze. then to drag and drop it onto a 256MB thumb drive would take mere seconds.
being as the record company wouldn't be involved(we all know the companies take too much), there would be more profit for the artist, and fans could take the show home with them, knowing they supported the artist by buying some of their merchandise.
win/win situation if you ask me. i have heard of some U.S. clubs that actually have done this with all the acts that have appeared on their stages, where there's a vending machine in the club where you can insert your own thumb drive to load it with the music you've just purchased, or can buy a drive from the machine and load it with the music. in those clubs the sales generated are split between the club and the artist.
so Danko, J.C and Dan, what are your thoughts on this sort of evolution of music distribution?
