A couple of years ago, I wrote about an emerging trend that would have CDs of live concerts burned and ready for distribution just as the last notes were ringing from the stage. Three companies were vying to get this concept off the ground–a couple of indies and Clear Channel.
Today, Clear Channel is out of the concert business. Its entertainment holdings, ranging from Ozzfest to Jason Giambi's supermarket-opening appearances, are now part of Live Nation, a publicly-traded spin-off venture. It also inherited Clear Channel's CD-burning venture, Instant Live, which has been used on a slew of shows in the last year, including Hall and Oates, O.A.R., Black Crowes, Big Head Todd and the Monsters and The Cult. However, the sins of the father have been visited upon the son. When it announced this venture, in 2004, Clear Channel was basing it not only on anticipated demand, but also on a patent that it obviously hoped would stifle competition in this new area. The patent is predicated on the concept that the cue points on the CD indicating the beginning and end of songs are inserted on the fly, as the master disc is being burned from signal sent from the FOH position. Clear Channel has tried to compel competitors to pay a license fee for the concept of creating after-show discs, even if they were not using the exact same process.
This drew fire from critics, of which Clear Channel has many, and most recently spurred a patent challenge by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, asserting that the patent was being used to lock artists into using Clear Channel venues if they wanted to participate in after-concert CD revenues, and that applying the patent as a broader concept blocked innovation by others. The action seeks to have the U.S. Patent Office revoke the patent.
In the wake of the Live Nation spin-off last December, it's not clear whether the patent resides with Clear Channel or Live Nation. Either way, the concert business is the loser. Along with lawsuits against individual downloaders–some of whom seem to not have ever owned a computer–by the RIAA, and the discovery that Sony BMG had been planting spyware on some of its CDs that took root in consumers' PCs, the attempt to close the door to competition in the nascent post-concert CD business further erodes the passion of consumers for music products. If you want to keep people at home, downloading music files, playing video games and cocooning in their home theatres, this is the way to do it. Meanwhile, note Verizon's V CAST system cell-cast of the Fugees' reunion concert from Hollywood in February. Telephone companies may be on the brink of doing to the concert business what Apple Computer did to the music industry.
Mixers Benefit
At a cost of about $20 each, the afterconcert CD business isn't going to turn concert revenues around. But it does create one more revenue stream that everyone in the chain, from artist to promoter, can benefit from. More to the point, there is a benefit that sound mixers can derive from it, as well. Most mixers are lucky to get four or five live concert recordings released during a 20-year career. This concept means that FOH and monitor mixers could be literally doing a live album at every show. The possibilities are significant. Live Nation says that because the packaging is preprinted, it can have the same level of liner notes that any other CD would have, although this is at the artist's discretion. But even if technical and production credits are not printed on the disc or its packaging at the show site, they can be listed on the Web site of the companies making and distributing the discs. This becomes a great new pathway for promoting a mixer's career.
Secondly, if the after-show CD concept does prove to have legs and sales become substantial, it's not unreasonable to press for it to lead to a Grammy category for live sound recordings. The Academy had instituted one for surround audio three years ago, and it's safe to suggest that there are far more live recordings sold than there are multichannel ones.
It's also not unreasonable to suggest that, if the work of mixers is going to be used beyond a particular performance, mixers be compensated accordingly. If their work contributes to increased revenues for the artist, why shouldn't that contribution be recognized with an additional payment?
However, none of this is likely to happen if the market for after-concert CDs is stifled in its infancy, or if the market is limited to a single service provider. It would be good if Live Nation were to put a heavy emphasis on the concept–it could inspire others to innovate other new revenue ideas. And Live Nation, as the heir to Clear Channel's pervasiveness in the concert market, is well-placed to help the concept become pervasive quickly. And it's also not unreasonable that Live Nation would want to protect its business as it builds it. But not by perverting the patent process to use as a club to bludgeon others and create a monopoly. And it's been reported that the company is using its venue holdings to compel artists who want to play at their properties to agree to use the Instant Live service. That's another holdover from the bad old Clear Channel days that works against everyone's interests in the long run.
The after-concert CD is a great idea because it gives the consumer something special, and in the process, blunts demand for illicit concert copying by providing better recording of a legitimate product. There's a lot of win-win possible here. Let's hope everyone realizes it before the opportunity slips away.
