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 February 1, 2009 The Digital Music Revolution: What Download Sites Have to Offer -- Part Five
www.HDtracks.com has added some more 24-bit/96kHz downloads, as well as more labels, including ECM and the Norwegian audiophile label 2L. Representing ECM are seminal albums by Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, and Pat Metheny. More titles have been added by labels already on board. It pays to visit HDtracks often; there always seems to be something new. If you’re looking for something off the beaten track and have the time to search and experiment, go to Live Music Archive (www.archive.org/details/etree), which lists rock, country, jazz, and bluegrass concerts recorded largely by audience members. Yes, some bands and artists prohibit the practice, but a growing number actually encourage audience recording, which has been proved to be free, friendly advertising that enhances a band’s popularity and word-of-mouth exposure. Each band has its own policy regarding recording and downloading, but in general, the deal is: Use and share with friends, but don’t sell commercially. If you stick to the rules, it’s entirely legal. (Live Music Archive has a section that explains its policies in detail.) Live Music Archive’s list of artists includes many names familiar to me: John Mayer, Los Lonely Boys, Ryan Adams, Smashing Pumpkins, Drive-By Truckers, Cowboy Junkies, My Morning Jacket, etc. Unfamiliar to me but no doubt known to some readers are Ween, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Hexbelt, and Boombox. But that’s just the tip of iceberg. There are hundreds of bands, and as many venues. With some artists, such as Mayer, you can track an entire tour online, and for Grateful Dead fans, this site is like dying and going to heaven -- there’s a whole section of nothing but Dead concerts. These recordings are download-only -- you can’t buy them on CD. In fact, many individual listings caution that the 24-bit tracks can’t be used to burn a CD. The quality of the recordings themselves, which range from concerts taped years ago to ones recorded within the last few days, are better than I would have guessed. Each concert entry lists the person or company responsible for the recording, along with the equipment used -- a few even included the taper’s row and seat number. Most of the downloads I checked were 24/48 FLAC, which I converted to WAV so that I could load them into iTunes. A John Mayer concert from the First National Bank Amphitheater in Tinley Park, Illinois, was exceptionally good. There’s excellent presence from the band, good frequency response, and there’s just enough audience noise to give it the feel of a live concert without detracting from the music. Scroll down till you see the links "Search for Lossless-Only Recordings (No-MP3)" and "Search for Some 24-bit FLAC Recordings." These bring up long lists of recordings that can be sorted in different ways (selectable at the right of the screen): by Download Count, Date (recorded), Date Added, Relevance (I never figured out what this one meant), or, most useful to me, Average Rating. That last gives you, first, the concerts given a rating of five stars, followed by four-star events, and so on. I found that though the ratings are generally fair, you have to take them with a grain of salt: a few ratings from some zonked-out fans might skew things a bit. Downloading from Live Music Archive can be a chore if you don’t have a download manager. Most of the concerts have at least 16 tracks; even with a manager, they can sometimes come up out of order, so it’s good to print out the playlist. Then you can just go into your browser-library program (in my case, iTunes), click "Get info," and assign each track a playlist number. The tracks will then be automatically rearranged in the correct order. It’s a little work, but hey -- did I mention the best thing about Live Music Archive? It’s free (though they’d appreciate a contribution to keep it up and running). This is archiving for the 21st century, and I enjoy browsing the site. It can be addictive, but remember, it will still be there tomorrow, and probably with a few new recordings that have been added in the previous 24 hours. . . . Rad Bennett
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