How to capture the Roadburn Festival webcast to disk

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On 29 May 2006, at 21:52, Jonathan Jarrett wrote:
> 	The things that bothers me with such parallels, if I can do my
> usual thing and play devil's advocate, is that the real success  
> stories
> on this field all seem to be in the US jamband scene, which is huge  
> and
> apparently equipped with many wealthy and fanatic fans. And some poor
> fanatic ones also :-)

Well, _mostly_ university students, actually.  Unless things have  
changed since I were a lad, they'll fit more into the latter  
category ....

> Hawkwind's fanbase just isn't that mobilised, even
> if it might be huge. Also, those bands sell enough that a record label
> can either accept the situation, and the market, or else lump it, but
> Hawkwind can't muster the same sort of leverage.

Originally, the situation we see in the States springs directly from  
the fact that it's much easier to rely on ticket sales from heavy  
touring in the States than in Europe.  Thus the Grateful Dead didn't  
have to care if fans tapes the shows -- they could even encourage it,  
and still survive on concert revenues.  But since audience tapes  
proved an *incredibly* successful form of viral marketing (after 20  
years half the country had a Dead tape somewhere) the burgeoning "jam  
band" scene adopted it wholesale.  Many bands kept some kind of  
control on soundboards (Phish used to keep their DAT soundboards  
whilst leaking analogue copies to the fans for trading), and once it  
had been established that fans would buy archival concert recordings,  
it was a short step to releasing whole tours on CD (Pearl Jam did  
that, no?), but since commercially produced CDs are really quite  
expensive in terms of overhead, the advancement of technology to the  
point where concerts could just be downloaded was like a godsend.   
And now, many fans are by-passing CDs completely even for the studio  
records.

Which is why I don't think any difference in the "scene" really  
matter.  The model has *changed*.  Concert promoters in the States  
are waking up to the fact that it's not just about rabid Deadheads  
with thousands of patchouli-scented cassettes -- *lots* of people  
want a CD souvenir of the concert they just saw.  Even the dreaded  
Clear Channel is scrambling to make it possible to buy, or at least  
place an order for, a CD copy on your way out of the venue.

Do Hawkwind fans not buy stuff at shows?  On the contray, those  
shirts and CD singles were going like hotcakes (whatever that means)  
at the last Hawkwind gig I saw!

> Of course the way to
> change that is to gather the fanbase in by selling stuff to them
> frequently, and I don't see what the band would have to lose except  
> time
> by having live downloads for sale on their site while they're only  
> with
> Voiceprint. They will get bootlegged, but it really should only be
> spillage over the edge of the vessel, if you see what I mean; no-one's
> going to choose the bootleg over a legit copy if they know there's a
> choice, and this is presumably the logic that Metallica finally worked
> out.

Metallica always allowed audience taping, of course.  Metal they  
might have been, but that San Francisco legacy.  They hurt themselves  
in the PR Department a bit by going ballistic over Napster, but of  
course a) people shouldn't steal music, and b) Metallica would be  
screwed if people stopped buying the studio albums ;)

But honetly: Who's going to buy a bootleg when it's easier to buy the  
legit thing?  It's no harder to bootleg a CD than a concert  
recording.  Is there a big problem with people selling bootleg copies  
of the last Hawkwind studio album?  Why would it be different with  
downloadable files?  A CD is just a collection of files, after all.   
I don't understand the objection.

> But I don't think it's going to work as well for HW as it does
> for GM because GM are a special case and so are the bands they play  
> with
> who've been mentioned in this thread, Phish, Widespread Panic, and so
> on. Other scenes really haven't got that kind of coherence IMO.

I don't think you need a scene with coherence.  You just need to sell  
something.  And what Hawkwind has is, basically, an untapped revenue  
stream, regardless of how many tour dates they put in.  They overhead  
required to record and mix their shows is minimal -- I mean, Brock  
already *did* the hard work for Roadburn.  The only remaining link in  
the chain is to sell fans the recording by download.  There's no  
label involved, no production costs for discs and inserts.  If no one  
buys the download, they've lost little but some time.  If *anyone*  
buys the download, they've made some money that they wouldn't have  
otherwise made.

Selling downloads, selling live downloads -- these are just examples  
of another change in the music business as the tech changes, just  
like selling _any_ kind of recording was when there were first  
recordings to sell.  And perhaps there were musicians then, too, who  
resisted the idea of selling recorded version of their performances n  
a wax cylinder or whatever.  It wasn't the way things used to be!   
But I guess we don't know who they are now ;)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
http://www.carlaz.com/