The music industry drives me crazy. No this isn't another rant about how much I hate [insert here: mp3s/Meg White's drumming/indie rock], but rather a frustration.

In the last year or so, it has become fashionable for bands to release DVDs of live concerts. There's nothing wrong with this, in fact, I applaud it. Now I can buy a (cheap, used) DVD and rip the audio to CDR to get an awesome sounding soundboard recording. The question is, why is this the route that record labels are taking to release live music?

Recording a good quality live DVD is expensive. You need to hire a camera crew and equipment, plus the equipment to record the audio from the board. Then you have to pay to get the audio mixed and synched with the video, which also has to be edited. Then you have to pay to have the cover art designed and the DVDs pressed and released. In this age of pay-by-the-song digital music downloads, this process seems unnecessary.

About now (if you're still reading), you've just dropped the drink you were holding. Am I actually supporting crappy compressed audio? Not exactly, but I am supporting the iTunes economic model. Most bands already record their own shows from the board for their own use, so why not release these recordings on iTunes? You avoid having to pay the video crew, the covert art designers, and the promotional and pressing costs. You can even do an endaround past the record label altogether and make more money per song than you would otherwise. You could release every show you play for very little cost per show (just the cost to do a reasonable audio mix) and make money from something you normally wouldn't.

Let's face it, I would never buy an iPod even if they make it small enough to fit on the head of a pin and add a color screen and a 20 terabyte flash drive. But if I could download a gigantic library of live shows on iTunes you'd better believe that I'd think about it. On one hand I'd be getting crappy compressed audio, but on the other hand I'd be avoiding the personal conversations, dropouts, and cut songs that are standard on many audience DAT recordings.

Maybe it won't work and wouldn't be as successful as I think it would, but why hasn't this even been attempted yet? Pearl Jam tried it with CDs, but they had the added cost of pressing CDs and the consumer had the added cost of purchasing them from Pearl Jam's website and paying shipping costs. Now it looks like they're running their own download application where you can purchase the shows and even print covert art. This is nice, but it requires running a custom Java application and therefore is missing the huge market that already runs iTunes.

Record labels (and movie studios) love to whine when people stop buying their stuff as much as they used to, but they are very slow to innovate. Somebody needs to jump on this.

Posted by: Brian at September 15, 2005 2:30 PM