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rigonkuloustoday at 4:04 PM10 repliesview on HN

I am an active and enthusiastic recordist and have decades of stuff I've accumulated over the years.

One of the concerts I captured in the 90's, lives on as a bootleg which I often see around the scene of this one particularly great live electronic dance band, whose punters have created true value out of the hour and a half of live concert input I managed to record, standing right there front stage and center, with the band looking right at me.

It was a hilarious experience - I expected to get booted out pretty fast, so I held my ground as still as I could, DAT-tape rolling by, shotgun mike held in front of me like it was just normal, as if I belonged there.

The lead singer caught my eye and gave me a wide grin. I survived the concert, it was awesome, but boy was I relieved to have made it home with that DAT - which I of course, proceeded to digitize with my brand new spdf/io ..

The next year the band (who are big and famous, btw) were in the same city and I happened to be around, I got invited backstage to meet the band, participate in a bit of nerdery regarding their live setup and gear and so on, and talk about that recording I'd made.

I'd put it out as a pure bootleg, no questions asked.

Turns out they'd heard it and enjoyed it and came to appreciate the nature of their bootleggers, as avid fans who gave the band themselves something extra to think about in what was then, a burgeoning digital/online universe about to explode.

So, seeing it around, almost 30 years now .. here and there, again and again .. is quite hilarious. Youtube often recommends it to me in my playlist, its just there.

And at a certain spot in the recording, I tell my mate to stop standing so close to me (he was blocking the shottie), and prepare for my ass getting bounced - which never happened, thankfully.

So yeah, I just wanna say, if you personally have the desire to be a recordist, and have a pure purpose in it, I'd say just freakin' go for it.

Record All The Things.

Its good for the Artists, yo. And also their fans. (Its how we get rid of the managers, cough cough..)


Replies

tyrusttoday at 5:21 PM

Great story, but how are you going to say all that but not link to the recording?

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999900000999today at 5:22 PM

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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brightballtoday at 9:54 PM

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.

lukantoday at 6:48 PM

"Record All The Things."

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

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erickhilltoday at 4:13 PM

I loved reading this with the still built-in caginess around all the identifying details. Just in case!

jjuliustoday at 6:20 PM

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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whompyjawtoday at 5:02 PM

What is a "punter"?

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hungryhobbittoday at 8:15 PM

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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augusto-mouratoday at 5:24 PM

You made me curious about the recording, could you share the youtube link for it? Only if you are comfortable with it, ofc