Tour revenues:
USBs, because we built the studio around that, but we do want a dedicated app for phone and tablet whereby the stream goes up on a server and people can then stream the music directly from the app. “Saying that, I think people
still like to have something physical, which is why the USB works; we also provide a bracelet that’s customisable: for example, customers can have the date of the gig written on it or whatever other information they want. They still like that personal touch.” Abbey Road’s Live Here Now
(which was recently acquired by Universal) has been professionally capturing live concerts on the night for almost a decade. The company has dabbled with the idea of USB recordings, though according to head of UK marketing, David Rowntree, 80% of business is still CD sales, which falls into step with Concert Live’s experience. “We found USB as an audio carrier very difficult to make work – if you have AV material on a stick then it makes a great product, but the problem with USB is that it’s three to four times more expensive than making a CD, which makes it a different proposition for the consumer,” Rowntree says. “We did USB stuff with The Pixies and Deadmau5 and there have been USB-led tech companies that were basically ‘dupe’ companies that tried to crowbar audio into it as they had a plant there; they put a lot of stereo front-of-house mixes on and made it look shiny, which got them some work for a while, but they soon left the market again.”
The finished article: the sort of professionally produced packages that fans can expect from a Concert Live project. (Bottom left): Typical poster promoting Concert Live’s post-gig deal – a real temptation for hardcore fans
Although Rowntree admits
that FOH mixes are “getting a lot better”, his company still believes that a discrete separate mix that “isn’t compensating for the hall” is a far better listening proposition, therefore takes splits from stage and records onto Pyramix. “It could be anything from an
Avid VENUE up to an 88- channel SSL that we use on the night, and although we occasionally use Pro Tools, Pyramix is absolutely bombproof, so we tend to stick with that format,” he reveals. “We then use between six and
12 Sennheiser and AKG rifle mics for the audience, run a broadcast mix down to real-time CD burners and duplicate them.” If all of Live Here Now’s
burners are up and running, around 250 CDs can be produced every five minutes on the night. Pricing is approximately £15-20 per double album including packaging, which is all done pre-gig, so once again punters have a professional-looking souvenir to take away. “The post-performance thing is quite collector-based, and the
collectors and hardcore fans certainly of the older and more established bands are really into it – they need to have everything,” he admits. “Peter Gabriel’s a good example; he has been doing this for years. He records everything himself onto CD and download then releases through an American firm and does very well out of it. “Another is Pearl Jam, who
released all their shows on CD early on and did very well too. With regard to our client base, we did two world tours with Depeche Mode – that was 90 shows, and some fans bought all
of them; they’re the real hardcore collectors.” Rowntree says that “10% of
the venue” is a good conversion in terms of sales on the night, though when Live Here Now recorded Marillion recently, it was around 20%. (Though, Marillion fans do have a reputation for being particularly obsessive about their prog rock icons.)
Inside the Live Here Now truck, recording KT Tunstall at the Islington Assembly Hall (Below) A wall of CD burners
JOINT ACCOUNTING Like Live Band Audio, every job is a joint venture. “We pay all the up front costs – between £2.5 and £5k per gig including stock – and then we run a transparent profit split with the artist at the end. It’s a standard model that we’ve built up over the last decade and we’ve done well when working with the major artists,” he explains. “Bands playing smaller venues would struggle to be economic for recording lots of shows though – the way to make it work for these developing bands is to record a show and manufacture stock for them to sell near the start of a long tour.” All of Live Here Now’s
recordings are available for download the morning after the show, which amounts to approximately 20%of its business. “One hour-and-a-half long
show is about £10 to download directly off of our website; and our downloads are 320kbps MP3s, the highest quality MP3 available, so our customers really are getting a good
36 l PSNLIVE 2013
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