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#Post#: 19775--------------------------------------------------
How technology is transforming live concert bootlegging
By: Mac Date: June 10, 2013, 3:20 pm
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[glow=red,2,300]How technology is transforming live concert
bootlegging[/glow]
[quote]“If you put your cameras down you might be able to live
in the moment,” chided Ian Brown, frontman of iconic Mancunian
indie band The Stone Roses.
Those were among the first words uttered by Brown during the
band’s first comeback gig in May 2012, after a 16-year hiatus.
But the singer wasn’t so much concerned about Polaroids,
point-and-shoots or any other kind of camera that might have
proliferated ‘Roses gigs back in the day – what he was referring
to was iPhones, Androids and every other kind of smartphone.
If you think this was simply the ramblings of a worn-out,
has-been rock star without so much as a finger-nail on the pulse
of the zeitgeist, you’d be wrong. Less than a year later, New
York rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs echoed these sentiments via a
sign for arriving gig-goers that read:
“Please do not watch the show through a screen on your smart
device/camera. Put that shit away as a courtesy to the person
behind you and to [band members] Nick, Karen and Brian.”
Then, a month ago, Mercury Prize-winning British quartet Alt-J
began trialing new technology designed to encourage fans to keep
recording equipment in their pockets, and steer eyes towards the
stage and ensuing live performance.
There’s a rising tide against the infiltration of smart devices
at live shows, and for good reason.
Bands and other performers are looking to regain the full
attention of their audience, while promoters and others with a
vested interest in artists’ affairs are keen to profit from this
insatiable desire to ‘relive’ an event once it’s come to a
close. If they can’t fight it, they’d may as well embrace it and
try and make a few bucks out of it with legitimate services.
Posterity
Having been a serial gig-goer for many years, I too have been
known to whip out my mobile phone or digital camera and capture
some footage or a few photos for posterity. Without even a hint
of exaggeration, I can say that 99% of the time I’ve never
looked at my ‘handiwork’ more than once, simply because they
were never of a good enough quality to accurately reflect the
gig as I remembered it. So why did I do it? I think primarily
because it became habitual and, well, because I was able to do
it.
A big turning point for me came back in 2010 when The Pixies
played at The Brixton Academy in London. On my way in, I noticed
a stall that offered live audio recordings of the gig for around
£15 ($20). I assumed I would pay up front and receive a disc in
the post a week or two later but, alas, I was wrong.
I did pay on the spot, but the CD was available within about 20
minutes of the show ending, meaning that by the time I’d
suffered the painfully long queue to regain my jacket, a
brand-spanking new, professionally recorded live album –
including cover art – was in my hands. For someone who went to
maybe 20-30 gigs a year, this was the first time I’d ever seen
this, and it was a revelation. Sure, it was audio-only, but it
made me realize how much better a professional recording is – it
brings actual value to the experience.
After a little bit of digging, I soon discovered that a company
called DiscLive had been offering such a service since the turn
of the century, teaming up with the likes of Billy Idol to sell
CDs immediately after they left the stage. And in more recent
times, bands such as The Red Hot Chilli Peppers were also
selling live music downloads of all their gigs, though in their
instance it was a few days after to allow proper professional
mixes to be carried out.
But this still isn’t all that common at gigs. While some bigger
bands do release official videos of their gigs, usually the only
way to relive a night is through buying or downloading something
recorded by a fellow fan. There’s clearly a market for live
music recordings, and there’s an evident paradigm between
live-music bootlegging (audio or video) and studio-recorded
music piracy.
Napster yings, Apple yangs
When Napster arrived on the scene back in 1999, the music
industry didn’t know what hit it. Although it wasn’t the first
peer-to-peer file-sharing service by a long stretch, it was the
first to gain a reputation specifically for music downloads via
a user-friendly interface. And all this at a time when the
Internet was really starting to gain momentum in homes, offices
and universities around the world – the timing could not have
been more perfect.
But Napster, in its original guise at least, ultimately fell
foul to the laws of the land and was forced offline under the
corporate heft of the music industry. Napster just made it way
too easy for folk to share copyrighted music.
But for every ying, there’s a yang. Napster also heralded a
digital music revolution that saw the dawn of mp3 players,
iTunes and Spotify. By giving the music-loving public an easy
conduit to downloading or streaming music on-demand, this went
some way towards restoring order.
However, this only really applies to studio-recorded music. If
you want to relive that special night at New York’s Bowery
Ballroom, San Francisco’s Fillmore or London’s Brixton Academy,
there’s still the same-old problem as before. YouTube kind of
fills a void here, but you’ll no doubt agree that 90% of the
recordings are plain awful. This is changing though.
Technology brings power to the people
In days gone by, anyone wishing to bootleg a gig would have to
smuggle in some fairly chunky equipment. The advent of the
smartphone era empowered anyone to be a have-a-go bootlegger,
but it’s only in recent times where devices have been of
sufficient quality to bring real value to those watching online
via YouTube and other platforms. I mean, the Nokia N8 was used
to produce a whole feature film.
Check out the quality of this Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert
clip, shot on a Nokia Lumia 920. The sound is really quite
excellent, and helps highlight why Nokia is keen to stop other
manufacturers using its microphone technology:
[/quote]
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiVio1b_vfU
[quote]Ignoring the fact that this particular clip is shot from
distance, just think how easy it would be to record a fairly
good multi-angle video. Three or four friends positioned in
different parts of an auditorium, each armed with a high-spec
smartphone, could produce a high-quality video of any show.
Here’s how good a close-up video can look with the Lumia 920 –
this is shot in 1080p:
[/quote]
HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhLVUH_N0zk
[quote]
There’s already the software to easily stitch together such
content too. Vyclone (previous coverage) for example, lets users
sync and edit multi-angle videos directly from their mobile
phones. It only works with footage captured simultaneously which
is perfect for gigs, and it uses the longest audio track from
the available videos as the source, before normalizing the rest
of the audio to create a sense of cohesion.
The technology is already there for seriously good fan-shot
concert videos, and the more this technology improves and
proliferates, the more this will cause headaches for those with
a direct financial interest in live performances. As things
stand, many venues ban professional-grade recording equipment –
so we’re talking optical zoom lenses here. But it will be
near-impossible for auditoriums to ban smartphones, which is why
we’re now seeing the beginnings of a counter-response.
More...
HTML http://thenextweb.com/media/2013/06/08/how-technology-is-transforming-concert-bootlegging/
[/quote]
#Post#: 19776--------------------------------------------------
Re: How technology is transforming live concert bootlegging
By: Chiprocks1 Date: June 10, 2013, 3:42 pm
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Great post, dude. When I first got into YouTube, my main
objective was to find rare bootlegs. It was more miss than hits
and over the years, it seemed to get worst because everyone was
now uploading whatever they captured. But lately, the tide has
shifted a great deal as more and more people are now more
knowledgeable and giving us some high quality stuff to rival
those "official" DVD releases. It's these specific shows that
gave me the idea to finally do The Concert Venue Thread so that
I'd have a place to post great shows.
#Post#: 19787--------------------------------------------------
Re: How technology is transforming live concert bootlegging
By: Mac Date: June 11, 2013, 12:02 pm
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Things are changing quickly, aren't they.
I too hope to see better posts. I just have to ignore the
crap... when it's crap.
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