Future Of Taping
The Future of Music Trading
The golden years of trading started around the time the DAT became available and lasted through 2003.
Recordings from concerts come in essentially two flavors: sound boards and audience. Phish stopped allowing sound boards years ago and String Cheese Incident stopped allowing them a few years back. Yonder Mountain String band stopped allowing them just months ago. This is a trend that will not be slowing down anytime soon.
As with everyone else, bands are looking for other sources of income. Freely traded copies of their shows is an area ripe for the picking. The technology to offer individual copies of live concerts on demand has only recently matured. String Cheese' On The Road series was an early offering. Phish's livephish.com took the concept to new heights by adopting the standards the taping community created. This is good for both of them.
Bands deserve the right to sell copies of their concerts. I think we're about to see a flood of bands exercise this right. Many services are being created to serve the 'jam band' bands. These services are "me-too" businesses that hope to profit by copying the successes of Phish and SCI.
The taping and trading community has always been about the free exchange of music. Tapers spend thousands of dollars on their equipment but will clone you a DAT in a heartbeat. These tapers have a great respect for the bands that are kind enough to allow taping and good enough to generate the desire for taping. However, many of those bands do not have the resources to do what Phish and SCI did themselves. For this reason they will want to jump on these new for-profit businesses.
When bands start signing up for these companies (which will take the free-exchange-of-music trading communities' own standards and sell them back to the community), sound board recording will end forever.
SBD>D>CDR>RIP
As sad as this is, it's inevitable. The big question in my mind is: how will the jam band fan community respond when a band prohibits all SBD and AUD taping in favor of a sell their concerts only policy?
Tom
KevinRobbinsEssay - A submission by a db.etree reader in response to this essay.
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