Once upon a time, we used to trade for live music. Long-awaited packages of tapes, then CDs, would arrive in the mail and the holiday of sounds would commence.
At the Panic show I attended the other night, I took note of how few tapers were present. Are tapers on their way to becoming an endangered species? With all the new download services for live music in place, I believe they are.
iTunes, the mack daddy of music downloads, only carries official record releases. But Live Downloads and Disc Logic offer hundreds of live and unreleased shows for a price. As do some bands, directly from their own sites. Gov’t Mule and Grateful Dead have such proprietary models in place.
Of course, one can still visit Archive.org and find a treasure trove of live sounds therein for free. Given that there is so much live music available for free, why do I, and others like me, willingly pay the above entities for music?
1) Convenience
2) Sound quality
3) Faster downloads
I’d love to hear your opinions on this matter.