How do you feel about recordings of your gigs being traded?

[Pete C]

This is an offshoot of a discussion in Speak Out.

I'm interested in musicians' takes on the not-for-profit trading of unissued concert recordings. Clearly there are certain issues that can bother a musician: lack of artistic control about which performances stay around for posterity, and lack of financial remuneration, among others. On the other hand, it is a way that a community of fans gets to hear more of your music, often in otherwise undocumented contexts, and I think these people are the most likely to buy your commercial releases and attend your gigs. I realize that some musicians embrace this practice while others are very much opposed, so I'd be interested in hearing musicians' responses here.

[hearsay]

This is prevalent in the jam band scene and pretty much accepted as far as I can tell. Jam band fans have websites with set lists and bootleg catalogs and I know from hanging around with my former roommate who was in a famous jam band that the fans are not shy about making the recordings and even asking the musicians the song titles and players names. The musicians do accept it as promotion and I think they do figure, as you said Pete, that those people will also want to have the official release.

Although I can see what's wrong with it, I personally wouldn't have a big problem with it (in fact I've given the ok to bootleg my shows and have a lot of live stuff on my site (http://brettsroka.com/sounds.html) anyway). At this point in my musical life I could use as many ears hearing our group and coming to our shows as possible. I also think it's pretty tough to stop and the way things are going most music will soon be free anyway.

[Ellery Eskelin]

just posted some comments on the thread in question...

[Samuel]

I have a powerful dislike for people taping me without permission. (Not, of course, that I'm an Artist Of Such Stature As To Worry Lots About It.) The main reasons are lack of artistic control and lack of technical control.

There are nights which I just don't want circulating. My perspective is that my performance is MY performance, which I am willing to share with you and you and you who make the effort to come see me. (Notice I didn't say, "pay" to come see me. If you get in for free, enjoy the show.) The decision about whether to share the performance with people who didn't make that effort, for whatever reason, is mine. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't.

We've also heard bunches of crummy-sounding bootlegs. Everyone who hears a crummy-sounding tape of me associates me with crummy sound. That's why I spent several thousand dollars making a CD, y'know.

And that last point also undercuts the argument that people who hear you on a concert-tape are the most likely to buy your commercial releases and attend your gigs. No offense, Pete, but that's one of those things that "sounds right" but is highly dubious on the ground. People are going to come see me if they hear me on the radio, see my promo in the weekly, and get ambushed by both their friends to come. Or they're going to come because they see all the jazz at xxx venue. Bottom line: I really do believe that people come to jazz shows because they like coming to jazz shows. The fact that they may or may not listening to bad tapes of concerts does not seem to me to be closely related. And as for people bootlegging concerts and paying for commercial product, it looks far more likely that they'll bootleg concerts and bootleg product, too. "I like that -- I want that -- I didn't pay for it before -- why start now" would be the general modality.

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Samuel

And that last point also undercuts the argument that people who hear you on a concert-tape are the most likely to buy your commercial releases and attend your gigs. . .

I wasn't stating a cause & effect (i.e. that gig recordings lead to new audience), but rather that the people trading concert recordings are most likely already buying your commercial releases & attending your gigs. Beyond that I was interested in hearing how musicians feel about the practice. I understand the artistic control issues, but I don't agree that it is a financial threat.

[relyles]

I have been obsessively trading unofficial recordings of live performances for the past year and a half. I have developed a preference for recordings of radio broadcasts - primarily because the sound quality is usually superior. I have developed relationships with several European traders because far more jazz concerts are broadcast on the radio or TV in Europe than in the U.S. I do not record any concerts myself, but I do also have relationships with a couple of traders that record a lot of concerts - primarily with the artist's consent.

I think the vast majority of traders that I have interacted with are music fans first. They trade for performances by artists that they enjoy and I also think most of them purchase the official recordings and/or attend the live performances. For me, even though in that short time I have accumulated a large number of unofficial recordings, I still manage to spend a couple hundred dollars per month on purchases of official recordings. I also do try to attend live gigs as often as my finances and family obligations will permit.

I understand the concerns that I have heard from some artists that this activity reduces their ability to control what will represent them in posterity, but from a personal standpoint I know that my interest (and consequently financial support) of some artists has been enhanced by first hearing them on an unofficial recordings.

But then again I am a fanatic and am always fighting the impulse to possess far more music than I can ever truly need.

[mke]

Originally posted by relyles
I understand the concerns that I have heard from some artists that this activity reduces their ability to control what will represent them in posterity
It seems to me that artists have little control over their recorded legacy, since they generally don't decide what goes in and out of print, how things are packaged into greatest hits compilations, etc.

[Samuel]

You're thinking about the handful of players whose work appears on substantial labels. The vast majority of jazz CDs today are either self-released or small-released, with the players retaining control.

Heck, "small-released" (if I may diverge briefly off-topic). Remember Greg Osby talking a few years back about how friggin' Blue Note only prints about five thousand discs? "Big-release jazz" goes out in quantities that Beyonce leaves off at the dump!

[cookie]

I wouldn't mind. I wish people would. It worked ok for the Grateful Dead. Some of you purists would laugh, but it sure helped the Dead keep working steadily for years. And yeah, some performances are crap, but some performances are good. The point is that they were captured and Deadheads can talk for hours over the improvisational differences in a song from one show to the next---or between two shows 20 years apart. That's like naked sharing of your process, not just your product.

Interesting question. My answer might be different if I were a more high profile player.

[Deke]

I doubt the fact that the Grateful Dead offered bootlegging facilities (Is it still bootlegging if you have permission?) from the soundboard. Frank Zappa was totally against bootlegging, even going so far as to visit giant record fairs with his lawyer and minders in tow, and confiscate every doubtful disc they could find, and he had a similar longevity and popularity rating to the Dead.

Whatever your opinion is, some people will respect it and some won't, but if they like your music they'll still come to your shows.

[talidog]

This is an interesting question for me, and it's great to see people having a discussion about this issue. I'm a musician, and as a musician I'm keenly tuned in to artist concerns about what happens to their music and how they make a living from being creative. I'm also an arts management consultant, and I work with arts organizations across the country who see their audiences getting older and older and in many cases not being replenished, as well as jazz clubs and venues which are disappearing by the hundreds. And my biggest concern - above artist right even - is that when people by and large stop coming to listen, where will we be then?

I agree with those who say the system's broken and we need to embrace the changes taking place with technology and public expectations for how they get their music. But I also want to see there be a valid reason (which copyright laws were intended to fill) for people to be creative, i.e. that they can 'profit' from their effort. But I worry about us cutting off our noses to spite our face.

Agreeing to be a performer, it seems to me, is in many ways agreeing to be in the public eye - and that brings benefits and drawbacks. Most celebrities dislike the negative attention they receive in public, but have few quarrels when this attention is in their interest. I don't know that I agree with the statement that a public performance 'belongs' to the artist. A performance it seems to me includes the music and also the environment and experience that the audience shares in, and I don't know where you draw that line and tell people they can't find a way to keep part of that experience (especially if they're not trying to financially profit from that experience). Sure performers will have good nights and bad nights, but isn't that part of performing? It's difficult for me to completely come to terms with the argument that in a profession which is oriented toward 'putting something out there,' you can expect to also retain complete control over what's going out there.

Anyway, interesting discussion...

Mark in Mendocino

[jazzjock251]

Greg Osby has several full concerts available on his site in mp3 format, standing by and ready to be downloaded.

http://www.gregosby.com

Is it any coincidence that he's been playing with the Grateful Dead off and on for the past few years? Maybe there's a great promotional lesson there somewhere that many jazz artists should heed. Osby is now prominent in both the jazz world as well as in jam band circles. He's played with Phil Lesh's Phil and Friends group a lot, Warren Hayne's Government Mule, he recorded with Dead guitarist Jimmy Herring and has Joan Osborne, formerly with the Dead and a well known and respected artist in her own right, appearing on his new CD called "Public".

It appears that he's quite open to taping.

[Vince Kargatis]

I understand the artistic control issues, but I don't agree that it is a financial threat.For me, this is key, at least in determining whether any ethical rights issues are involved. I believe in a fundamental right against (egregious) harm, but do not recognize a positive right to artistic control (I can see why people might want such control, but not that lacking it is automatically a rights violation). So in terms of harm assessment, it's the financial threat that is solely germane, in my view. So non-financially-harmful trading I don't see as a rights violation, though, depending on the artist's views, it may well be rude.

As always, harm assessment is key - there will be arguments over how trading might financially harm the artist. My point is that that's where the argument should lie, and not with issues of control.

[jazzharbinger07]

I think it's a great thing, because I'm a true fan of live recordings. I think it creates a loyal fan base. I don't think it would hurt the profit, but help fans to stay interested. I would buy or trade a live recording before a studio take any day. If it could ever get to the level of like trading baseball cards that would be great for music.

[BadMange]

Hey, new here and just wanted to post my opinion. I think that if someone asks your permission to record you with the intent on distributing the show for free, no harm no foul. Most people who trade live music are very respectful of musicians' wishes.

I love listening to live music, and am a big fan of the Allman Bros. When the Allmans decided to change their minds and request that live shows only be traded person to person and not available for download to the masses, the shows disappeared off webservers. Another example is the band Phish. They sell some of their shows on their website, thus those shows aren't available to download off the net. Mostly, the fans are very respectful of this (but not much else, I've found...) and there aren't any Phish boots for sale that I've seen. There are a few bad apples that will always spoil it for the rest of us, but ultimately it's up to the musicians. And if you're popular enough to warrant people wanting to document your shows, it makes sense to stop bootleggers.

Well, that's my $0.02. At the least, be flattered that someone likes your music enough to want to listen to it again and again.

-Bad Mange

[martini]

I have collected a few radio broadcasts and audience recordings of jazz musicians, generally artists of whom I already have most of their official releases. The majority of these recordings, particularly the audience tapes, are of horrible quality and would only appeal to the most hardcore fanatic. Such recordings are interesting only because they sometimes feature lineups/ensembles that may not be well documented, if at all, by official releases. I think it is generally true that most people who collect such items do so because they have an insatiable interest in the history of a particular artist. When it comes to jazz, which is a very marginal music, I can’t really think that such passion is a bad thing. I would argue that it is safe to assume that anyone collecting such material probably has deep collections of official releases by whichever artist is in question.

A book such as the Campbell/Trent Sun Ra discography (which is loaded with material about audience tapes) or websites like the Cecil Taylor research group have detailed recordings of illegitimate origin, and such recordings do serve as interesting historical footnotes for the very few people who care about such things.

I certainly understand why artists would feel uncomfortable about having people surreptitiously recording their shows. If I were a performing artist, I would probably have mixed feelings about it as well. I would likely be anti-bootlegging (which I would define as people selling illegitimately recorded music) but pro-taping/trading as with the case of the Grateful Dead. Having an avid fan making a tape with a mini-disc recorder and a $50 mic is pretty benign in the grand scheme of things, IMO. And I really don’t think that anyone hearing an audience tape would make the intellectual fallacy to say “Oh man, listen to the poor sound quality of this tape made from the balcony--can you hear that guy coughing in the 3rd row--this musician must be terrible!” With regard to jazz music, one has to search a little to find radio broadcasts or audience tapes that are being traded of an artist, and he/she already knows that it is likely going to sound inferior to an official product. But the people who collect such material do it as hardcore fans, not because they are strict audiophiles, and these fans are not trying to undermine the musican(s) or music industry.

Now, of course an argument could be made to state otherwise, but I would argue that it would be a major stretch.

[Ellery Eskelin]

And I really don’t think that anyone hearing an audience tape would make the intellectual fallacy to say “Oh man, listen to the poor sound quality of this tape made from the balcony--can you hear that guy coughing in the 3rd row--this musician must be terrible!”

But one must take into account the effect that the poor sound quality has on the music itself. There's so much of the sound that simply isn't even there. It paints a very distorted picture of the music and in my opinion a lot of improvised music suffers immensely if the textures of the sound itself are compromised to that degree.

Most of the time my own music doesn't even make sense to me when I hear it back recorded that poorly (which is 98% of the time). I can't imagine what someone else would think. If this were someone's introduction to my music I certainly wouldn't expect them to go any further in seeking out one of my CDs. So I don't feel that having these kinds of recordings floating around really does me any favors.

[Reizar]

I actually encourage bootlegging live stuff. To me, it's the best keepsake you can get for the price of your ticket, whether it's $5 or $50. True, unless mixed properly, the sound isn't always the best. Sometimes it isn't even audible. But for some reason, it's still a good feeling to say, "I got this sweet bootleg off this band I heard at the club last night." If done properly, bootlegging live shows can actually help the group. I'd probably even go so far as to bootleg one of my own shows and share it on Kazaa or something if it sounded good.

But under no circumstances is bootlegging to be used for profit. That's illegal, and it's just plain dumb. Ask a Linux user why he hates Windows, and he'll tell you that its companies are charging you outrageous prices for things that you can just as easily write yourself. Linux is free. And non-profit. Now if only bootleggers were also die-hard Linux users. We'd all be happy then.

[relyles]

But one must take into account the effect that the poor sound quality has on the music itself. There's so much of the sound that simply isn't even there. It paints a very distorted picture of the music and in my opinion a lot of improvised music suffers immensely if the textures of the sound itself are compromised to that degree.

Most of the time my own music doesn't even make sense to me when I hear it back recorded that poorly (which is 98% of the time). I can't imagine what someone else would think. If this were someone's introduction to my music I certainly wouldn't expect them to go any further in seeking out one of my CDs. So I don't feel that having these kinds of recordings floating around really does me any favors.

Ellery - do these feelings extend to copies of radio broadcasts of your performances, which typically have significantly better sound quality than an audience recording? I have discovered that there is a significant amount of live jazz broadcasted on the radio everywhere except the U.S. Other than not agreeing to have your performances broadcasted, what can you realistically do to prevent copies of these broadcasts from circulating?

[Ellery Eskelin]

As for radio broadcasts of performances it's a gamble...on the one hand you're getting some extra money from the radio to let them record and broadcast your gig...on the other hand I'd say of all the radio broadcasts if been a part of (and I'm guessing there've been dozens) there's maybe 3 that I know of that I think sound good. Not great, but good. Actually there was one that sounded better than good and that was the Baron Down gig from the Willisau festival some years back. There was talk of releasing it and I actually hope that happens one day.

But so many of the radio gigs are less than great sounding since the engineers don't always know your music and there is rarely sufficient time to do a proper sound-check. There's always some amount of compromise involved...as the clock ticks and start time looms and you realize that's about as good as it's going to get if you want to actually eat before the concert.

Ironically one of the better sounding radio gigs we did was one in which we arrived at the festival about 30 minutes before show time. Keep in mind that we need one or two hours just to do a regular setup and sound check. So we threw the equipment up on stage and the engineer put up some mics and that was it. We had no idea what it was going to sound like. But the engineer was special...his name is Dick Lucas and he records a lot of the Dutch cats. He did better in 30 minutes than most others do in a whole afternoon. I was shocked.

So I take my chances and hope that the recordings are going to be OK. There's little I can do about them being diseminated and as I agreed to have them be recorded in the first place I can't get too upset about it. There are many that I think sound terrible but thems the breaks.

As for boots as keepsakes I try to offer a deal on CD sales at the gigs so that people who've already paid to get in can take something home with them rather than boot the show.