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Great story, but how are you going to say all that but not link to the recording?
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It's still technically illegal. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's a tacit Don't Ask, Don't Tell understanding in the community between artists and recorders. Even when individual recorders are known by the community and artists, keeping the pretense of anonymity might be important to preserving and protecting the scene.
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It's really up to the artists. Many are surprisingly cool with it, though there are a few notable exceptions (i.e. Prince). Sounds like the artist in this particlar case gave their blessing.

Many bands (like GD and Phish) specifically note in their rider that venues must allow and provide space for tapers to bring their rigs in.

A sibling comment in this thread pointed out my project Relisten[0], which now has over 4,000 bands who have given explicit permission for people to tape, record, and share their concerts non-commercially. We've been operating our FOSS platform for 12 years, and most of the audio is hosted by Archive.org. I can't tell you how many bands have begged us to add them to our platform.

[0] https://relisten.net (https://github.com/RelistenNet)

(The 4,000 number will be coming to web soon - it's available today on our mobile apps)

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We shouldn’t need the managers, but the record industry does everything it can to consolidate everything.

However, I do notice that for more uncommon music, the record industry sort it just looks the other way. For example Eminem has tons of really old music on YouTube that I’m sure his lawyers could figure out how to get taken down. But it just stays up.

I would really like music copyright to change within my lifetime. It should realistically be 30 years from first release, and after that it should go straight to the public domain. By then everyone’s made their money. Even Elvis won’t be public domain until like 2050 or 2060. I don’t really think he needs the money right now.

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I agree mostly but take issue with "not needing managers". As someone who went from split shows to big venues to touring, managers (good ones) are a godsend.

Will there be convenient parking?

Do they have adequate power?

Is the stage big enough?

Do we need to book sound?

Is there a weather contingency?

Where can we sleep?

What time is load in?

What time is sound check?

What form of payment?

How will they be advertising?

Who do we give promotional materials to?

Etc etc. Having someone take care of all this stuff allows us to focus on practicing and recording (which has another long list of questions that need to be addressed).

Not to mention networking and venue access. Put all that stuff together and it's a full time job that artists are poorly equipped to handle.

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I assumed managers in this context, meant the record industry machine. Most bands don’t care if you find a bootleg of a live recording, it’s going to be a very different experience versus an actual album anyway.
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Well that would be legal/contractual stuff you signed with the label. Doesn't have anything to do with managers, which was why I wasn't really sure what parent was saying.
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> However, I do notice that for more uncommon music, the record industry sort it just looks the other way. For example Eminem has tons of really old music on YouTube that I’m sure his lawyers could figure out how to get taken down. But it just stays up.

Or artists that have seen the merit in tolerating it/somewhat encouraging it. I'm a pretty hardcore Nine Inch Nails fan (seen >30 shows).

NINLive.com is a fantastic (unofficial) archive for our community. Close to 2k individual recordings, about 3/4 of all shows they've ever played have at least one recording.

NIN's camp is fully aware, the guy who runs the site has gotten invited to meet the band before. (And NIN has tossed unedited pro-shot tour footage to the fans before to play with, as well as things like directly linking to a fan-compiled concert film for another tour on their own home page).

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I got invited to see a NIN show recently, which was very kind of them.

The process of actually getting in, post-invite, was a bit of a weird experience: Waiting around at the front of the venue, meeting some of his PR folks, walking all the way around the outside to go in the back door to get escorted in. At one point we were given some armbands so we could do what we wanted as if we were regular concert-goers and they turned us loose.

Anyway, as we were walking around that huge place and chatting, one of them (Marcus?) asked me how I got interested in Nine Inch Nails.

And the first thing that came that came out of my mouth was "It is entirely possible that I banned Trent Reznor from IRC 30 years ago."

The response was immediate: "Never tell him that."

Anyhow, the crew that I met were all a bunch of great folks. Wonderful positivity, fun to talk to. 10/10.

---

(Now, you might be wondering why I banned Trent from #nin. That's easy: We banned everyone in that channel who said they were Trent Reznor. There's only one Trent, and these imposters showed up all the time so we did the right thing and got rid of them.

Except... I read an interview with him way back then, where he was asked specifically about IRC. His response was something like "Yeah, I tried IRC once and they banned me right away. Those guys are a bunch of dicks."

Whoops.)

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This brought a wide smile to my face. Thank you for telling that story.
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NIN had a messy breakup with their original manager about 15 years into things. Once Trent Reznor emerged as more or less a free agent, he embraced radical approaches to distributing music and other media.

The instrumental album "Ghosts I-IV" was released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, and the music went everywhere - and you can draw a line directly from that choice to the Oscar for the score for The Social Network.

Concert photos, wallpapers, and other photos are still up on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nineinchnails/albums

And the NIN camp utilized Vimeo alongside YouTube: https://vimeo.com/ninofficial

Rumor has it that Trent Reznor himself uploaded material to The Pirate Bay, because he didn't like the audio quality of the rips that were already floating around. There are three compilations that appeared, with custom artwork, including at least one exclusive version of a track that hasn't appeared anywhere else.

(p.s. wot up volk)

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I can't remember which album it was, perhaps "With Teeth," or the mentioned "Ghosts I-IV," when Trent Reznor offered the GarageBand files for the album. I thought it was amazing for an artist to offer their work up for people to remix and view, as long as they weren't profiting off of it. I've done the same with my artwork over the years, hoping that someone would come along and collab or "remix" my art into something new and interesting. I don't do promotion, so it hasn't occurred, but the idea was inspired by NIN and I think it's an amazing idea that can really build a community.

As an early teen when Broken came out, and I happened to be connected to some people into the 90's emerging industrial scene (not to take away from earlier scenes), NIN has always been a huge inspiration and got me into the grittier side of metal music.

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Trent also famously mourned the closing of Oink.fm, at one time the world largest largest music torrent tracker

https://www.wired.com/2007/10/trent-reznor-on/

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Oh hey, I certainly know that username!

And you're not going to plug yourself I certainly will: Appreciate your work on the NIN Hotline all these years and everything else you've done/added to the community.

> Rumor has it that Trent Reznor himself uploaded material to The Pirate Bay,

You'd certainly know better than I would but I feel like I recall Rob Sheridan confirming that in one of his interviews years later (not that there was really any doubt).

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> the record industry does everything it can to consolidate everything.

Financialization ? Productize, promote, push ?

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"Record All The Things."

Unless you use a crappy smartphone with a bright annoying screen ..

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Somebody whipped out a freakin iPad and started recording video in front of me once. Like wtf
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I talked to a big Grateful Dead fan the other day and he told me that they had special areas setup for anybody who wanted to record. They were happy to let people share.
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Yep, the tapers section. At some shows you could get a soundboard feed.

I was a teenager at the last show I was at, and I always envied thise guys.

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I loved reading this with the still built-in caginess around all the identifying details. Just in case!
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As a huge fan of the type of music you're probably describing, I'd love to know what artist/recording you're referring to here. Surely with the band's blessing and ~30 years of time passed, it'd be okay to divulge...
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Not OP, but my guess is Underworld.

Edit: or Erasure?

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Huge fan here, that was my immediate guess as well. :)
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What is a "punter"?
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In this case, an attendee to the concert.

More generally someone on the buying/risk side of a transaction.

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Customer/fan/concertgoer.
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also common UK slang, for someone who constantly does things in the grey.

to wit: scammer, scheister, player.

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That's incorrect. In British slang it means a customer/patron. In this context a fan/concertgoer

(Source: I'm British)

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interesting, so when a fellow is taken up by the cops, and he says "thers no punt, im telling you truth", is that unfamiliar?

i have a lot of different nationalities partaking of my wilderness lodge, and a lot of the younger english ones use punt/play/burn/scam as equivalent.

i can see how they could merge, considering a colloquial "punt" [rugby/footall] as a maneuver with adverse risk.

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Punt is a long gamble, most often used as part of "take a punt". As you say, probably related to football usage.

I don't know if punter (as in, customer) is related. I suppose buying something is always a bit of a punt to some extent.

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They are related, it seems. punter being gambler but evolving into general 'customer/member of the public' over time.
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Never heard of that usage (I'm also British).
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could it be a cockney thing ?
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No, but do check with Dick van Dyke - the real mockney geezer
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"interesting, so when a fellow is taken up by the cops, and he says "thers no punt, im telling you truth", is that unfamiliar?"

Yes it is unfamiliar - it is unlikely that anyone in the UK has accidentally said that.

"i have a lot of different nationalities partaking of my wilderness lodge, and a lot of the younger english ones use punt/play/burn/scam as equivalent."

Given you have a dislike of capitals, I'll hazard a guess at your age (but not tell you). Kids here (UK) don't use words like that, says Granddad! I get a capital G because I say so.

If I had to guess, I've probably replied to a shit AI sigh

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You made me curious about the recording, could you share the youtube link for it? Only if you are comfortable with it, ofc
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Great project, but it has an absolutely TERRIBLE UI. Please, if you love audio enough to put in the 95% of effort to get the files to the web, don't let everyone down with an atrocious interface to actually access those files.

Please, get someone who knows about usability or building web UIs to help you!

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Archive.org always made puzzling UI choices, not really sure why, but its a long running trend thats not likely to change. Such that for larger Band repos, fans stepped in and made their own front ends:

1. https://www.gdao.org/

2. https://dlr2008.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/on-public-access-to...

3. https://relisten.net/grateful-dead

Clearly this tape stash is worthy of similar treatment. Also of note for live music fans and collectors: Legendary Long Island Radio Station WLIR Live Show Archives:

https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22WLIR%22

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Thats why projects like Relisten exist

https://relisten.net

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