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Phish to Sell Downloads of Concerts 263

Posted by CowboyNeal from the not-just-on-tapes-anymore dept.
zzyzx writes "Phish have a new system for distributing their music. At livephish.com they will be selling their soundboard concert recordings. Most 2-3 hour concerts will cost $10 to download in mp3 format, $13 to download in the lossless shn format. What makes this interesting is that they're putting no DRM on these files at all. How are they protecting themselves? One paragraph in their Faq: 'Live Phish Downloads relies on an honor system, and we ask that you do not abuse the unrestricted nature of these files. If you would like to see this type of delivery of shows continue and flourish, please respect our taping policy and don't abuse the system.'" The honor system has served them well in the past, what with allowing their fans to record their concerts while also selling both studio and live albums.
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Phish to Sell Downloads of Concerts More

Phish to Sell Downloads of Concerts

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  • So... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...I pay $10 to hear one 2 hour guitar solo? I'm not sure that passes the bang-for-buck test.

  • Great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by unterderbrucke ( 628741 ) <unterderbrucke@yahoo.com> on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:17AM (#4936063)
    Live concert recordings usually aren't that good, so this is analgous to them seeling a a 64kbps MP3. While it may get spread around, the recording is bad enough that it publicizes the band but still ensures users will want to hear a better studio recording.

    • Re:Great idea! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      well i take it you really honestly dont know anything about live concert recording as I have done a good deal myself. And I would be more than willing to make you a CD or something of an audience recording that would knock your socks off. The point is these are soundboards that are mixed down from digital multitracks, phish has a barage of equipment at each show that they use to digitally master with, almost like a mobile studio, so the recordings are absoluting amazing if you ask me

    • Re:Great idea! (Score:2, Informative)

      by CommieOverlord ( 234015 )
      Wow. That was largely uninformed. Sonically, a good live recording should not be much (if at all) different from a studio recording. The one exception might be background audience noise.

      And performance wise, live recordings have a tendency to be much better.

      A few extremely good examples spring to mind:

      Genesis - All of their live albums

      Renaisance - Day of the Dreamer

      Rush - Different Stages Live

      Celibidache - Bruckner - Sym. 8

      • Re:Great idea! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Snork Asaurus ( 595692 )
        Recording live is tough, since it introduces a large set of elements that either don't exist in or can be controlled in a studio (echoes in indoor venues, for example). But good live recording is an art that can be mastered and many extremely well recorded live performances do exist.

        On top of that, many real musicians are at their best when playing live - it has a lot to do with being bona fide musicians who can introduce the element of surprise through variation, moments of inspiration and playing off audience reaction. Good live artists / recordings can convey a sense of 'electricity' in performance that is rarely captured in the studio. A few really great performances even shine through poor recordings to the extent that one can overlook a poor recording.

        BTW, I thought that I was the only one here that would remember Renaissance - I had the fortune to see them live about 120 years ago along with Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span.

    • Re:Great idea! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jwilhelm ( 238084 )
      The quality of these recordings will far surpass the quality of someone standing in the crowd with a mic. We've all heard those and they suck. These recordings will be recorded off the sound board; the quality will be amazing -- anyone who has done this before can attest to this. Essentially every inch of the stage and every item on the stage has a mic, and each is individually leveled on the board. The recordings for sale will be directly from this.

    • Re:Great idea! (Score:5, Informative)

      by The Dobber ( 576407 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:33AM (#4936129)
      Obviously you do not participate in (or were cognizant of the existance of) the activity of "tape-trading". Many of the shows I've collected sound as good, if not better than those produced and sold by "the man". These days its not uncommon for tapers to get direct feeds off the soundboards.

      Perhaps you should visit the Internet Archive, specifically the Audio section that deals with Etree / lossless recording. Over the past few months they've been actively aquiring and archiving shows (in shn and flac format) from taper friendly bands. Phish opt'd out of the archive, probably because they were working on thier own distribution system (which we are now seeing the genisis of).

      Download a couple of shows (if you got the bandwidth), convert and burn to audio CD. I think you might be pleasantly suprised. And the kicker is, there is quite a broad selection of acts hosted. Six months ago I never heard of String Cheese Incident.....

    • Re:Great idea! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by keefebert ( 535583 )
      I have already downloaded the 1st concert they have up (in mp3), and the quality is great. The recording was made from a direct patch to the soundboard, so the quality is identical to any live album they would normally put out (minus the little bit of audio loss in an mp3 compression). For a Phish fan, this is great.
      • Sweet! Wanna pass it along to me? I promise not to tell on you...

        • It's a free sample. Go to Live Phish and download it yourself.
          • It's a free sample. Go to Live Phish and download it yourself.

            At the risk of sounding like I'm trying on a tinfoil hat or Richard Stallman's ideology, it's not free. They require a "free" registration.

            At minimum, it costs you an email address that's now vulnerable to spam.

            Sorry, "free" means I get it with no fuss. I don't wanna be in your database. I am not a number. I am not your consumer-puppet. And I am not Spartacus. (Whoops.)
      • To be picky, this shouldn't be mistaken with the same quality as "A Live One" or "Slip Stich & Pass". The true commercial live albums they've produced are made in a very different fashion. These are simply a recording of the feed coming off the board containing the same stuff that goes into the house speakers at the show. While it's not optimized for home listening, it still sounds great.

        True live albums are recorded differently, more like a studio album. One big difference is that they are always matrix recordings of the soundboard mixed with audience mics for ambiance. This makes it sound brighter and more alive. Also, professional live tapes are recorded to multitrack with each track a distinct instrument. Traditionally, this is done in a van outside the venue for sound isolation purposes.

        So you're right in that the quality of these is better than audience tapes, they're still a notch below true live albums.

    • Re:Great idea! (Score:3, Informative)

      by garcia ( 6573 )
      Audiophiles (most of the live taping trend in Dead, Phish, SCI, etc) are VERY serious about the quality of their recordings.

      I actually prefer a AUD (audience) taped show than an SBD b/c of the crowd noise. I like to hear the reaction (especially if I hadn't been there) of the people listening to the show. It's amazing to hear what the Grateful Dead or String Cheese does to people. You hear them in their best.

      SBD's are PERFECT copies of the show. No noise, etc. They are copied to DAT and then piped through usually SoundForge then to CDR. Many SHN versions of shows have a great lineage: SBD>DAT>SoundForge>CDR.

      Don't talk about things you don't know about, please.
    • Miles Davis has several albums where a track was recorded live rather than in studio, and I challenge you to hear the difference. Though I will admit that they are recorded in small clubs, rather than a field with 50,000 fans. Still, if it was recorded from the sound board, then it is a direct patch to their instruments, so the sound should and is excellent.
    • Phish has post a free 3 disk show from the end of their last tour... and it sounds -great-. Honestly, it sounds like a studio album with clapping in between every track.

  • Ok, I had to look it up (-1, ignorant) (Score:5, Informative)

    by handsomepete ( 561396 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:20AM (#4936075) Journal
    SHN FAQ [umbc.edu] has some info and links regarding what shn is.

  • Lossless audio distribution: etree.org (Score:5, Interesting)

    by moron0 ( 13503 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:26AM (#4936101) Homepage
    It's great that Phish has decided to make a lossless format available as well as the lossy mp3s. etree.org [etree.org] has been doing this for a number of years, and a method of distribution has been developed that preserves the quality of the audio as it passes through many hands.

    etree.org offers legal show recordings from bands that promote the taping of their shows. The bands get free publicity, the fans get free recordings -- it works out for both parties.

    Phish is pretty typical in that they only allow audience recordings (no soundboard access) and they sell (generally) better sounding soundboard recordings.
    • sadly, phish has not credited etree.org for the wide distribution it has facilitated.
      • Maybe it's just me, but, most of the phish fans (including me) don't use etree.org for obtaining shows. My various out of state friends also don't use etree, they either download it off other sites/p2p/etc, or simply trade the old fashioned way. I'm guessing etree accounts for a small percentage of traded shows.
    • We knew Page was running a DAT right off the board for like 10 years now, and I was wondering if they were ever going to do anything with it.

      It's a good idea, really, since there are a LOT of people who go to the shows, but don't know a taper, or have the patience or bandwidth for etree. It's a cool idea to know that you can get a tape of the shows you've actually been to, especially with soundboard quality.

    • As another poster has mentioned, etree has very little to do with the actual exchange of the recordings. The Furthur network, otoh, is a P2P network that only traffics in live recordings of bands that allow taping.

      Perhaps the most surprising band that allows/encourages audience taping and trading of such tapes is Metallica, perhaps most famous in these parts for their stance on Napster.

  • Phish has always allowed tapers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Paul Jones ( 151355 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:26AM (#4936104)

    Anyone who's been to a Phish show can tell you about the legions of folks with high-gain mics and DAT/miniDisc units taping the whole show. Used to be that they'd have RCA patch bays coming off the soundboard that you could pull a post-mix feed from.

    Rather enlightened, IMHO.

    -JPJ

  • But this goes against the GD tradition... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by droopus ( 33472 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:28AM (#4936109)
    The Grateful Dead started legal concert taping years ago, eventually setting aside stageside sections for tapers where they could set up mic booms and their DAT recorders. These concerts (plus those of Phish, Allman Bros, Dead satellite groups, etc) for the past five-six years have been available on Etree [etree.org] which is essentially a clearinghouse for FTPs with .shn versions of these shows. Been downloading them for years. From the site: "You can find nearly every band that allows taping in the jambands community on etree.org, including Phish, The Grateful Dead, The Seth Yacovone Band, String Cheese Incident, The Slip, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Umphrey's McGee, The Big Wu, Amfibian and The New Deal."

    I would venture to say that these same Phish shows will be available on Etree sites, so why does livephish think people will pay for what they A) can get free already from Etree or B) will almost certainly end up on Etree anyway?

    Besides, doesn't charging for taped concerts kind of go against the concert-tapes-as-promotion philosophy? The reason the Dead were the most successful concert band of all time was partially due to the free availability of tons of concert tapes. I know livephish has to pay for bandwidth, but this is a much larger divergence from the Dead/Phish philosophy of free concert music than people seem to believe.
    • I think this peacefully co-exists with the GD tradition. The bootlegs are still legal, so nothing is lost. If the money is used to ensure that there is plenty of bandwidth to download the soundboard recordings, a lot has been gained from the fans' point of view. I can't wait to see how this pans out.

    • Re:But this goes against the GD tradition... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hrieke ( 126185 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:40AM (#4936155) Homepage
      I would venture to say that these same Phish shows will be available on Etree sites, so why does livephish think people will pay for what they A) can get free already from Etree or B) will almost certainly end up on Etree anyway?
      • Because I support the band
      • Because I like their music, and it's from the patch board, where the signal is nice and clean
      • Because we all been bitching and moaning about the DMCA and record companies, and this can prove to the bands that there are other ways to make money
      • Because I'm Karma Whoring, here and in the real world
    • phish has charged for concert recordings for a number of years now, for example:
      • A Live One
      • Hampton Comes Alive
      • The "Live Phish" Series (currently at volume 16)
      • Slip, Stitch, and Pass

      That's 19 live albums that they have sold. And they still allow taping their shows.

      Obviously, not everyone will buy shows off livephish, but some dedicated fans (like my room mate) who want to show support for them probably will.

      I tend not to second guess phish, as they are the most successful "jam band" around; they seem to know what they are doing.

    • Re:But this goes against the GD tradition... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by blakestah ( 91866 ) <blakestah@gmail.com> on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:47AM (#4936178) Homepage
      This is totally in the Grateful Dead tradition of viral marketing.

      The Dead let people tape and trade their shows, but you couldn't sell them. The traders developed a barter system, and soundboard copies of shows were top dog in the barter system. You could get 3-4 non-soundboard shows for one soundboard.

      So now Phish will provide people with REALLY high quality bootlegs of shows for $10 (I guess bootleg isn't really the right term). People will buy them. For certain. And this puts MORE Phish music out there, and makes people more likely to go to their concerts and buy their studio releases - and that is the real goal. They know people will copy and trade these shows for free - again - that is the goal. They just give anyone an easy way to get any concert for $10. That is a lot of value compared to checking bartering message boards and trying to come up with a valuable enough trade.

      A smart business move by Phish. The Dead made their shows tradeable, and had more concert attendance in the 1980s and 1990s than any other band. They made a lot of cash from their shows, and from their merchandising.
      • you're retarded. You NEVER did more than a 1-1 trade. If you didn't have a SBD to trade back, you did a B&P (blanks and postage) trade or joined a vine (tape starts at one person and goes along down the list of people who then make their own copy from the master and pass it along -- doesn't increase generations that way).

        Now that we have fast connections and CD burners there is no longer a need to trade. Large FTPs are setup to do the serving for several "seeds" of good quality shows. People get them and burn them. If they see fit, they burn and send out for trades/B&P to those that are on 56k or are too lazy/uninformed to get it from etree.

        I don't think it is a smart business move. I am even MORE inclined not to attend one of their concerts b/c of this.

        The Grateful Dead were one of the most successul bands w/o major album releases nor high ticket costs. They let you listen to them in their best setting (live) for free.

        I don't agree w/what Phish did...
        • I'm sorry, but you have not given any good reasons about why this makes you mad, or less likely to go to a show.

          Phish has always allowed tapers to tape the show for free (in some cases, you need a special tapers ticket, but usually just buy a regular one and bring your equipment to the show)

          These recorded shows are legally distributeable for FREE. The only restriction is that you are not allowed to sell them.

          Recently, Phish started selling live soundboard recordings of these same shows on CD. You can buy them at your local CD store, or off the phish website for about $20 US. All that is changing is that now, insted of waiting for these new volumes of live shows to be released, they are going to have every show available on their website, for a $13 US fee, and you bring your own media. Not only that, but now Phish is making $13 off each show they sell (minus cost), insted of $2 that their record label gives them.

          If you don't want to buy the $13 SHN's, then keep downloading the legal bootleg releases insted. The quality is almost just as good, and its free, and freely distributeable. This will not put an end to bootleg trading, it will just give the people that want to support the band, and who want higher quality recordings, the opportunity to do so.
          (BTW, almost none of the officially released shows are freely distributeable, only the SHN's taped by independant tapers)

          These shows sold off livephish.com will NOT show up on etree. It is etree's policy to not serve any content that is not legally distributeable. The etree community polices itself very well, and anybody who offered an FTP account containing illegal content will be removed from the list in a heartbeat.
        • you're retarded. You NEVER did more than a 1-1 trade. If you didn't have a SBD to trade back, you did a B&P (blanks and postage) trade or joined a vine

          No, I never did. My brother, however, has several hundred dead shows on tape, and sometimes he would find something he wanted, and would have to spend several more trades to get whatever it was the person offering the item of interest wanted. Pure barter. That is all changing now, though, with the internet. Sound board copies of shows 10-15 years old are becoming REALLY common, whereas they used to be incredibly rare.

          Anyway, to the point. Phish's move will increase the quality and quantity of their live concert performance tapings, and will make money doing it. If the Grateful Dead were right, this makes Phish money in concert attendance, in merchandising, and in sales of studio albums.

          And I think the GD were right, but time will tell.

    • Re:But this goes against the GD tradition... (Score:5, Informative)

      by BigWorm ( 103915 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:49AM (#4936185) Homepage
      Besides, doesn't charging for taped concerts kind of go against the concert-tapes-as-promotion philosophy? The reason the Dead were the most successful concert band of all time was partially due to the free availability of tons of concert tapes. I know livephish has to pay for bandwidth, but this is a much larger divergence from the Dead/Phish philosophy of free concert music than people seem to believe.

      A couple points:

      - Phish does not allow soundboard patches at their shows (due to the illegal foreign "import" scene). These soundboard recordings will naturally sound better than your typical audience recording. I'll pay for the quality. Some of my audience recordings sound great. Others sound like they were recorded in a tin can.

      - You can still freely trade any audience tape/mp3/shn. In fact, Phish just modified their taping/trading policy to allow ANY audience recording to be traded online (Taping Policy [phish.com]). The previous policy prohibited the online trading of audience recordings if a commercial release of the same show was available.

      - How is this any different from the live Grateful Dead releases (i.e. Dick's Picks)? You won't find any of the Dick's Picks releases on etree [etree.org]. Seems to me like they are embracing a new medium.

      • Phish does not allow soundboard patches at their shows (due to the illegal foreign "import" scene).

        Actually, they discontinued the soundboard access due to the growing numbers of tapers, not any import problems. There was a taper in 1992 who took it upon himself to unplug a cable in the middle of a show which killed the PA system - that was the final straw. For smaller bands, controlling soundboard tapers is managable, but I don't know of any large bands who still allow board patches.
    • 1st, Phish are Phish, not the Grateful Dead.

      But since the door has been opened, the Grateful Dead has a whole line of live recordings called the "Dick's Picks" series, and I just bought one last weekend. Why? 1) I wanted to support the band (or I guess GDM now) and my local record store 2) It was a killer show (11/1/85), and I know that Dick's Picks are about the best quality out there (although there are incredible recordings on Etree! Go tapers!). 3) I could afford to buy the damned thing! I work for a living, and have downloaded _lots_ of stuff for free, so why can't I pay for a recording that has been hand picked and professionally mastered, etc.

      Regarding the "honor system" and no DRM, etc. Isn't this what we have been doing in the past with music?

      I don't think that Phish or any other band is being a bad guy for selling something that they have made. I do it every day at my job, don't you? Plus for 10/13 bucks a pop, that is not bad. You know that the server will not drop you, unlike Etree. Anyone who has done etree for a while knows what it feels like to have a couple songs missing from a show. Also, the GD tradition is to allow paying concert goers to freely tape and distribute those tapes, there is nothing that says they will tape and freely distribute their shows.
    • Besides, doesn't charging for taped concerts kind of go against the concert-tapes-as-promotion philosophy? The reason the Dead were the most successful concert band of all time was partially due to the free availability of tons of concert tapes. I know livephish has to pay for bandwidth, but this is a much larger divergence from the Dead/Phish philosophy of free concert music than people seem to believe.

      Not at all.

      You're perfectly free to continue making and trading audience tapes. These downloads are the soundboards, which Phish is treating as commercial releases, just distributed through the internet instead of on physical CDs.

      Besides, the Dead did the same thing all along. What do you think Live Dead, Europe 72, Steal Your Face, Without A Net, the Vault series, and Dick's Picks are? Commercial releases of live concert soundboard recordings.

      I would venture to say that these same Phish shows will be available on Etree sites, so why does livephish think people will pay for what they A) can get free already from Etree or B) will almost certainly end up on Etree anyway?

      A) Etree will have the audience tapes for free. Live Phish Downloads will have the soundboards for sale. Your choice.

      B) These recordings will NOT end up on Etree. These are commercial releases, which are off-limits for tape trading.

    • I've been lucky enough to get out to see the coolest shows in this "genre" this year. I think it's a cool thing they're doing even from the simple fact that it gives us a chance to test and find the business model that we like for dealing music on the web... With so many companies biting it... Liquid Audio for instance... Some experimentation is in order.

      I'll tell you why I'll by directly from Phish online... Quality control... they're not going to release a poor quality recording on that site... It's going to be the best you can get.

      Why I never got into Etree... professed .shn snobs are the primary reason. Why on earth would I want to here all the lossless glory of a two Shure SM58 mics hooked up to a Sony minidisc player. (In other words some people... SOME people out there are not recording experts...) And in that case You're not going to get a feed that would sound good enough to merit a file size 10x larger. I would get into .shn if I knew the source of the audio was High quality (came straight from the band or a buddy who was a taper.). Instead of spending 500MB of downloading on what turned out to be crap...

      I can't wait to download NYC on New Years Eve after I get home from that show.

      Also... I speak for most people... I buy the CD's because studio recording and live performance are two entirely different arts. Both which should be appreciated. Live CD's I buy for the reason I'd download a confirmed high quality lossless recording... quality of live recording.

      Oh yeah... and who else out there thought Bonnaroo rocked?!!!

  • Wow... (Score:5, Funny)

    by inode_buddha ( 576844 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:32AM (#4936124) Journal
    What's his name from Metallica needs to see this
    • What's his name from Metallica needs to see this

      Lars Ulrich has already forgot what brought them to fame... bootlegs. I doubt Ulrich & co will take the above path in digital music since they're now well established, and don't need (or want) it anymore.
    • Metallica actually does allow taping and trading of those tapes. You need to get a special ticket, set up i a special section, and they generally don't allow stands though.
    • Money Good! Napster Bad!

    • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by stubear ( 130454 )
      Lars' comment has long been taken out of context. His complaint was "no one asked me if I want to participate", in reference to file trading online. Sure, Metallica allowed fans to trade music early on in their career, but METALLICA made this choice, not the fans.

      Something lost in this tiresome debate between the RIAA and geeks worldwide, too fucking cheap to buy a CD but spend ungodly amounts of money on computer gear, is what do the artists want? Phish seems to want to let fans download their music online, with limitations of course. Does this mean every musician wants this? Does Phish speak for an entire industry? No, they do not. They merely speak for their own little band and their own little band doesn't mind a little file trading of their concerts.

      Many seem to think they can do whatever the fuck they want but let's spin this in a way many here can understand. What if I took some GPL'ed code and built a proprietary app with it. Say, for instance, I took GIMP and made it usable by the print industry and fixed the horrible UI. Then I went to sell the application online and made millions on my new Photoshop killer and I refused to relinquish the source code despite the incessant whining of the geek community over violating their license.

      When you copy music you have done the exact same thing. You have violated a license, an agreement between you and the copyright holder. Phish allows for more lenient terms in licensing of their copyrights. Other bands aren't as amenable to these terms and stick with the standard copyright license as set forth in US and foreign law.

      In my opinion, you have absolutely no fucking right to cry foul when your rights are being violated if you willfully violate the rights of others.
      • Really? I don't remember signing a contract when I purchased my last CD. I saw no EULA in the CD case, nor did I click or check OK on anything. At which point did I agree to this "license" you speak of?

        • Re:Wow... (Score:4, Informative)

          by stubear ( 130454 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @02:56PM (#4937140)
          Are you a US citizen? Are you a citizen of a country which protects intellectual property through copyright laws? That's the point at which you agreed. The license is on the outside of the package and it looks like a C with a circle around it.

        • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)

          by Natalie's Hot Grits ( 241348 )
          I'm not sure about your parent's post about the "license" but any time you recieve a work that is copyrighted, you are automatically bound by copyright law, without having to sign or agree to anything.

          All a license does is give you EXTRA rights aside from that already granted to you via copyright law (fair use). Under copyright law, if you recieve (because you paid for it, or obtained it in other legal ways) a work without any type of license, that means that you are 100% restricted to not redistribute the work. The only copies you are allowed are fair use copies, etc.

          If an EULA or license does not grant you extra rights, sometimes they do bad and _RESTRICT_ those rights guaranteed to you by copyright law. In these cases, those parts of the EULA are effectively unenforceable. No EULA can restrict fair use and be valid.

          So in a sence, your right, you didn't sign or accept any agreement when you purchased the work. On the other hand, you are not legally allowed to do anything except listen to it consistant to the fair use clause in US copyright law, and not copy it under any other circumstances. So you are in fact bound, but not by a contract, but by US Criminal law, wether you accept any extra agreements/EULA's or not.

          In effect, the "spirit" of your parent is correct, though it is technically incorrect.

          cheers >

  • Pearl Jam (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:36AM (#4936142)
    When Pearl Jam [Ten Club [tenclub.net], Synergy [sonymusic.com]] sold the official bootlegs for their 2000 tour, they didn't care if you traded the boots. So if you bought the CDs, fine, and if you wanted to trade/download them, thats fine too.

    B

  • SHN beater: FLAC (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey, they could have saved on bandwidth costs if they used the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Check it out at flac.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]. It's pretty cool.

    G.

  • the best part of the FAQ (Score:5, Funny)

    by phaxkolumbo ( 572192 ) <phaxkolumbo@gm a i l.com> on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:40AM (#4936154)
    (straight from the FAQ... i found this, for some reason, quite amusing.)

    What are the recommended specs for enjoying Live Phish Downloads?

    Windows
    Windows 98SE, 2000, ME, XP, or later 128 MB RAM 10 GB Hard Drive (a larger hard drive is optimal) Pentium III 750MHz or faster (or equivalent) Cable Modem or DSL Internet Explorer 5.5 or later

    Mac OS
    Mac OS 9.1 or later 128 MB RAM 10GB Hard Drive (a larger hard drive is optimal) Cable Modem or DSL Internet Explorer 5 or later

    Unix
    You probably don't need our advice.

  • Check out furthurnet.org too (Score:5, Informative)

    by martinde ( 137088 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @10:41AM (#4936157) Homepage
    There is a peer to peer network (in beta) for only bands like Phish and the Dead that allow taping. It's called furthurnet.org [furthurnet.org]. There is a java client that works fairly well in Linux, too. I've grabbed tons of cool stuff from there - Hendrix, Neil Young, Built to Spill, Phish - there's a huge list of bands. And they have .shn and .mp3s currently, eventually there will be video too.
    • for those of us not in the know, furthur was the name of the bus ken kesey rode on with the merry pranksters and in the electric kool-aid acid test.

      it's also the name of the tour the surviving grateful dead members organized after Jerry Garcia died.

      The Grateful Dead was really the first jam band to encourage bootlegging and tape-trading as a grass roots way to get their music heard without caving in to Payola for air time.

  • an advantage of live distribution (Score:3, Informative)

    by tiedyejeremy ( 559815 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @11:05AM (#4936233) Homepage Journal
    For over two years this band has been on hiatus, yet their 4 show holiday run may be some of the most difficult tickets to attain, ever. Why so much popularity for a very non-mainstream jam band? The free distribution of live recordings of nearly every show they've played and the behind the scenes efforts of dedicated fans like
    david "zzyzx" [ihoz.com] steinberg,
    paul glace at Phantasy Tour [phantasytour.com] and the crew at etree.org with their nearly anal quality hounds tracking the the recording status and quality of most legally traded music on the internet.

    Live distribution shows what a dynamic band this really is. Not a cookie cutter, same show every night type band! Check them out.

  • This story upsets me. For years, I've been a Dave Matthews Band fan, another band which allows live taping of their shows. One of the great things about live taping is the community that gets built around the band, without the band being directly involved. I've met so many great people through trades and message boards.

    Since the policy states that copies can't be made for other people, the entire network of live performance trading (for Phish, anyways), has just been destroyed, and the community that the trading has created with it.

    I hope the band enjoys their $10 or $13, but it may cost them fans in the long run, and I hope it does. This is not a good precedent to set.

    Should DMB ever go this way with their taping policy, I guarantee that they won't see another dime from me. Live performances is what first excited me about DMB, and the grassroots support that they had (and still do) via the trading network is a beutiful thing, and should be preserves. Yes, even in the face of the almighty dollar.
    • Audience trading is still allowed. In fact, along with this new program they actually changed their tape trading policies to make them LESS restrictive. This just offers something new that was previously unavailable.
    • "Since the policy states that copies can't be made for other people, the entire network of live performance trading (for Phish, anyways), has just been destroyed,"

      you are incorrect here. the non distribution only affects the soundboard recordings released by the band, not the audience tapers that are there. Just like DMB. DMB also does not allow soundboards to be released. And, at least, phish as resonable ticket prices, not the $75/person charged by dave.

  • All economics rely on the honor system. Just over time we have devloped other systems to enforce the honor system from which trade came. This isn't really a new idea, it is going back to older ideas of trade. Seperating the middle men that build up in the industry. More artists are leaning this way because the industry is focussing on high profit return artists. I prefer direct communication between an artist and the artists audience.

  • Artists defecting the RIAA? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by minitrue ( 213792 ) on Saturday December 21, 2002 @11:18AM (#4936270)
    You know, this whole debate has been framed around the recording industry losing consumers but maybe there's an even bigger issue out there. What if the RIAA starts losing artists? And I'm not talking about existing artists wedded to the RIAA system. What is the recording industry going to do when an entire generation of artists who won't even remember the day when a piece of information had to be married to an object (when the music had to come in the form of something physical like a CD) decide to distribute their own recordings online?

    I'm not saying that this will definitely happen. If future DRM devices disallows us from playing any 'unsigned' material, it won't happen. If artists can't find effective formulas for rising above the internet din, they won't try it. And there will always be artists who are hooked on the label system and their dope of MTV fame, the bling-bling, and the rockstar lifestyle. But most artists don't get signed anyway. Major media is the distribution lotto. One of the reasons people play the lotto is if they're desperate and have very little other chance of making an honest living. Net distribution might offer a chance to make an honest living. If more artists look at it this way, maybe they'll decide to distribute themselves.

    When high profile artists decide to self-distribute, it must drive the RIAA nuts. Granted, Phish is distributing their soundboard recordings which only Elektra (their label) cares about, but if more major artists start pulling a Prince (escape the label, distribute through the web) and do it successfully, unsigned artists will follow.

    All hope lie in the proles! :)
    • If Phish can get $10 for a download instead of $1 for a legally sold CD, anything under a 10:1 piracy rate beyond the current CD piracy rate puts them ahead of the game, and keeps $10 or so (assuming a $18 CD) out of the record companies' legal war chest. This sounds like a win all around.

      And the try-before-you-buy model works very well, a lot better than the trying-by-buying system the MPAA seems to prefer...

  • but 13 bucks, for a live concert recording. I may buy one on principle. w00t.
  • If they let you download peanut butter sandwiches and magic brownies, would it hurt the parking lot vendors?

  • Phish a phunny (Score:2, Funny)

    by nfotxn ( 519715 )

    Shouldn't that be "in the Phaq"?

    Thank you, I'll be here all week! Tip your waitstaff...

  • If you would like to see this type of delivery of shows continue and flourish, please respect our taping policy and don't abuse the system.

    Whoops - looks like the only restriction is if you copy the recordings to tape - I guess distributing the MP3's isn't against the rules then...
  • You know, I've looked around for awhile on etree and related sites, and the reason that I've never really gotten into them is a real lack of music that I want to hear (which is ok, for the most part). I don't expect every music site to cater to my tastes. What's disturbing, however, is the fact that there is a supreme lack of (ie, none whatsoever) punk bands and bootlegs from punk concerts.

    You'd think that punk would have really adopted the whole linux/free software movement, given that the same 'fight the establishment'/DIY sentiment is really prevalent in both movements. I really wonder why more smaller punk bands don't put themselves up on sites like this now. Crass used to bootleg themselves all the time, and they were selling halfway decent bootlegs of themselves for the mere cost of the tape years ago.

    Yes, I know that I probably shouldn't expect this from anyone on epitaph or fat records, or that whole wave of warped-tour style punk that most people tend to group everyone into. However, I really wish that punks would get with the program here and start using the net to spread their music and message more effectively.

    Just my little rant. :/
  • They call this value. Phish is using a marketing philosophy that literally goes back to the beginning of time: Treat your customers with respect and they'll contine to be your customers. See, despite what Hilary Rosen would have you believe, music fans WANT to support musicians. See, people make music for the following reasons (in order): 1. Because they love to. 2. Because they love others to enjoy their music. and finally, 3 To make a living. This is why there's so many garage bands; most of them are happy to make a few bucks playing a wedding, and they have real jobs during the week....like writing code for example. Phish realizes this and says to their fans: for short money we'll give you honest VALUE. Putting it simply, they treat their fans (customers) with respect. Also, consider that most of the 10 bucks you pay goes straight to Phish. Everybody wins...well almost everybody. The music INDUSTRY doesn't win. But remember, they don't make music all they do is distribute it. Their motivation is ONLY #3: to make money. Also, they don't respect their customers. In fact, they publically call their customers THIEVES. Is it no wonder that nobody likes them back?
    • See, despite what Hilary Rosen would have you believe, music fans WANT to support musicians.

      A lot of music "fans" want whatever is cool at the moment, regardless of quality, tied to a carefully marketed star*. Until that star becomes uncool (ie. not the latest and most heavily played), and suddenly all their former "fans" are talking trash and pretending they never cared much for them. Refer to file labeled "Spice Girls". Groups like this can't market music the same way Phish (or any other truly good band) does, simply because Phish has nurtured a community for years, and their live shows are unique works of art which lend themselves to the bootleg scene. Phish's fans will be glad to pay a few bucks for a good live recording, they respect the band and know the band respects them.

      Oh the irony. The music industry is so hooked on the fast heavy cash generated by the Britneys and P. Diddy's they hype, that they've effectively generated a fan base who care nothing for the shallow music they consume, and thus feel little guilt about "stealing intellectual property". Ah, Hilary, live and learn.

      * arguably these people are barely "musicians", definitely not "Artists" and can legitimately be called "performers".
  • Ok, obviously tastes vary, and if you don't like this band, paying for their music doesn't make sense. Having said this: this is exactly the way to escape RIA - you have to find musicians which will sell you their music without infringing on you fair-use rights.

    I don't think it's ok to just "share" mainstream music. If we don't like the terms the music industry offers, we should look around and find other bands who are *willing* to offer their music in reasonable formats, and then pay them appropriately.

    This might have the side effect of more variety returning to music, instead of having some cartell deciding which music we are supposed.

    Ok, sorry for the rant, but how about slashdot providing some "music review" section to complement the book reviews? The reviews would have to be about new artists, who are willing to sell mp3s (or some format like that) of their music.

    Just my 0.02 Euros.

  • This is refreshing to see how many Phish fans are out there on /. Any of you guys going to the NYE or Hampton shows? I got shut out of those, but I'm going to the Cincinnati shows.

    I'm listening to the 10/7/00 mp3's right now. They do sound great, but I like to occasionally here the audience cheering. I guess I'm still going to get shows from Furthur.

    -prator

  • Wow! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by asv108 ( 141455 ) <asvNO@SPAMivoss.com> on Saturday December 21, 2002 @02:16PM (#4936955) Homepage Journal
    As someone who has listened to and taped phish over the years, this is fantastic news. Phataudio.org [phataudio.org] was orginally a jamband MP3 site way back in the day before bandwidth costs got too high and P2P came out.

    Other artists should take note that all Phish did was listen to the needs of their community! The Shn format is not very popular, but amongst the taping community it is thanks to etree.org. It will be very interesting to see how this service affects their live taping policy. Phish's live taping policy is much more restrictive than most because they do not offer soundboard patches. Tapers are forced to use expensive mic and preamp rigs ($5000+) if they want to get anything close to soundboard sound. Live concert taping with microphones is part art, part science, and there are quite a few people who take it way too seriously. The other major restriction of the Phish taping policy is once they release an album of a concert, that concert cannot be distributed online. I would imagine this service will not qualify as an "album."

    The next big step for this service will be the distribution of the Phish archives, Phish has recorded every concert from about 1990 on, possibly even earlier. Most of the recordings are multitrack DAT with audience mics to capture the crowd sounds. I would imagine the Grateful Dead will seek to duplicate this model if it is successful. A few years from now we might have every Grateful Dead and Phish show online, remastered SBD recordings. Today is a happy day for jamband fans. A little message to the authors of the "Phish sucks" posts, stick to Creed.

  • I've been a fan for several years, but when the live CD's started to come out I thought- uh,oh, this is going to cost, and I stopped buying. $10 is a reasonable price to pay for those shows. I wonder if they'll turn a blind eye to people trading the album art from the CD releases of the same shows..

  • ogg and flac (Score:2, Informative)

    by elohim ( 512193 )
    someone (possibly me) really needs to organize a emailing campaign to let phish know that some of us would like to see these very same files available in ogg (lossy, equivalent to mp3) and flac (lossless, equivalent to shn) formats. here's a great opportunity to promote our favorite royalty free media formats!
  • why not just decide what the music's value is, post portions of the concerts to get people hooked, then let people pay with paypal donations...when the donations and pledges reach the posted amount , release the music.
  • Let me preface this by saying that I know next to nothing about this band, but did anybody catch this article in the New York Times [nytimes.com] last week? It makes this Phish fans sound like addicted cult members. What struck me particularly odd was this quote:

    "The band takes over a crowd," said Megan Leff, 28, who works in advertising in Manhattan. "They throw everyone into a fury. You cannot move or shake quickly enough. Then, suddenly, they will have everyone fall and pretend they are dead."

    Does this article conform with anybody's experiences with this band or is it just a hoakey sensationalistic headlining?
  • Richard Thompson has been selling unavailable-anywhere live material, sold directly by the artist either mail order or at shows. It's not downloads, but its not copy-protected CDs, either.

    They're actually "professional quality" CDs with real liner notes, photos and a quality production job. Unfortunately they're not whole shows, but "best of" of specific tours.

    If I was a performed, I'd be inclined to do something like this. I'd discourage taping at the show, but I'd sell every show I did in a complete a format as was possible with as good a quality of audio as was possible.

    My guess is that most artists (other than Titney and other fake entertainment industry creations) could do this and make money. Real fans would likely buy them at the right price -- guaranteed quality, decent liner notes, support-my-artist mentality.

    As long as the sales cover the major up-front production cost, they should even make a buck on it, since the sound system and the show are pretty much paid for by the tickets to the show to begin with. Electronic distribution greatly lowers their upfront cost, but limits to some the value due to lack of liner notes, silkscreened CDs, etc, but would make selling every show more financially viable.

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