Live Music Trading Grows On Net
An LA Times article chronicles the growth of the legal free trading of live shows on the internet and provides some examples of how this phenomenon has fueled legal music sales from bands ranging from The Grateful Dead to the White Stripes.
Tape trading confirms the basic concept of music marketing that is so often ignored – if lot people here the music some of them will buy it. Millions are spent on videos and radio promotion but how much is money and effort is put into just sharing music for free with hard core music fans? Not much…
"…In recent months there’s been an explosion on the Internet of what used to be called tape trading," writes Steve Hochman in the August 8th issue of the LA Times. "This is not the illegal copying of commercially available music that is being fought by the major record companies. This is the free, generally legal exchange of fan-made concert tapes, radio broadcasts and material that was never officially released — by the Dead and just about anybody else."
"It’s a world that is growing daily at an exponential rate…"The Dead was the real forerunner," says Brewster Kahle, digital librarian of Internet Archive, which features a Live Music Archive section for concert recordings. "The idea was you sell some things, you give some things away, and that balance really personified the Grateful Dead. They started a model."
"The Live Music Archive’s catalog of recordings just passed 25,000, up from 20,000 in February and half that figure in March 2004. About a tenth of those are of Grateful Dead shows, and the bulk of the rest are from bands that share the loose jam aesthetic but not all. The list of performers represented runs to more than 1,000 and ranges from aggressive Texas rock outfit And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead to Billy Corgan’s short-lived Zwan."
"Such other sites as Dimeadozen and the Traders’ Den offer a full spectrum of selections. There’s everything from obscure jazz dates from the ’50s to major rock concerts that happened just a couple of days ago…These are the places for people coveting music that can’t be bought."
"Nothing illustrates the phenomenon more clearly, though, than the fact that when the White Stripes played the San Diego Street Scene on July 29, a recording of the show was posted on a download site before midnight — before many people who saw the show even got home."
"The Recording Industry Assn. of America, the music industry’s lobbying organization that staunchly opposes illegal downloading, piracy and the sale of bootleg recordings, says that it supports this kind of music trading as long as the artists approve."
"…Nothing that is available commercially is allowed in any way, period," says one of the Traders’ Den’s administrators, who asked that he be identified only by his screen name, bill_kate. "There are a few bands that have expressed certain restrictions on how and what can be traded. We respect these wishes."
"Other rules that are widely followed…include asking users to put music files in forms with the highest possible audio fidelity, using "lossless" formats such as FLAC or SHNN rather than compressing the data to lower-fidelity MP3 files. Posters are also asked to provide as much information as possible about the sources of the recording…But one rule is most adamantly stated by administrators and users alike: The music is not to be sold."
"…In a twist, although the easy connections have increased availability of unofficial releases, they have pretty much killed the profiteering that long went on in that world, a form of piracy that has long been fought by the music business."
"…the Grateful Dead continues to balance commerce and freedom. Despite so many recordings readily available on the Internet, the official releases of live albums continue at a steady pace, with the "Dick’s Picks" series now standing at three dozen titles alone, complemented by other live releases, as well as a newer program of Garcia solo concert recordings. Many make the argument that one feeds the other…"
Read the full LA Times article here.
