the Sugar Conspiracy

Thursday, July 10, 2003

Instant live!

This year, the music industry has taken the next logical step [after live albums]: they've created the souvenir concert album. Simultaneously a bold new step for bootlegs and the audio equivalent of the snapshots they sell you when you get off a rollercoaster, a venue can now sell you a CD of the concert you just saw as you're walking out the door. A team of engineers record the show from start to finish, with no edits, and the second it ends they burn the recording through a tower of CD-R drives. Ten minutes later it's packaged and ready to sell at the merch table-- a perfect, complete record of the gig you just watched, just the way you remember it.

But there's a catch: Instant Live, which launched in May, is owned by Clear Channel Entertainment, one of the largest and most aggressive media companies in America. The owner of six times as many radio stations as its nearest competitor and the owner and/or booker of over 130 venues, Clear Channel has been criticized for anti-competitive and anti-artist practices by the press-- Salon's extensive coverage has set the bar-- and politicans including Senator John McCain. Even the deregulation-happy FCC has scrutinized their business.

Story via Pitchfork.

I just saw this almost happen at a Samples show in DC. The Samples' propaganda slideshow before the show was advertising it, but it turns out they weren't recording that night. It's an interesting idea - I've got tons of bootleg tapes that I've traded with people over the years. And while currently, the artist is actually making money on this deal, I worry about Clear Channel's involvement. They seem to not be so "artist-friendly" when money's at stake.

And there's another issue for live music fans:
And for all the great records that could come from these programs, we risk downgrading the live album from an event of its own to just another snapshot. I'm worried that someday I'll walk out of the best show I've ever seen, drop ten dollars on a souvenir album because it's there, and a month later play it for my friends-- and suddenly the whole show will be lost; we'll just sort of look at each other and say, "What was the big deal?"

posted by chris at 4:28 PM
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