We've been on a roll lately in discussing how digital technology is changing the business models for the live sound industry. Few aspects of music have escaped unscathed, and live recordings are no exception.
The onetime "ne plus ultra" of the live LP, Frampton Comes Alive, has transitioned from milestone to artifact. In the RIAA's list of alltime top-100 albums, only one, Garth Brooks' Double Live, made the top ten, one of the few on the entire list. Steady declines in the number of conventional (I'm using that word for a reason) live recordings were countered to a degree by the explosive growth of music on DVD; from 2000 to 2004 the category grew by double and even triple digits annually. However, 2005 was a watershed year that saw the sector cool off and decline by 4%. What happened was a convergence of technology, economics and culture. Touring artists began to travel with hard drive recording systems, literally recording each and every show of a tour without having to lug boxes of tape around. The lower costs of production for live albums compared to studio recordings, which was the lure of live album projects to record labels, were more than offset by the costs of producing concerts for DVD, costs that often far exceeded anything they spent for audio-only recordings. And the music consumer began to shift towards a download paradigm –those hundreds of songs recorded to Pro Tools every night of the tour were no longer being aggregated for retail products, but rather were becoming commoditized one-offs used for promotions on Web sites to boost record and concert ticket sales.
No one has noticed this shift more than the remote recording vendors — live sound's truckers. Like mastering engineers, they were insulated from the effects of the shift by the complexity of their specialty. But that's changed.
"It's in flux right now," says Peter Yianilos, owner of Artisan Recording, a remote truck based in Ft. Lauderdale. "People are willing to pay $180 for a ticket to a concert but aren't willing to buy a recording of it on CD." Yianilos suggests further that the culture shift towards downloads is changing the dynamic. "Bands are striving to make live shows flawless, as opposed to capturing the spirit of a live performance. Live At Leeds was so real you could smell the pot. But now a live recording has to compete with extremely polished recorded performances. A concert isn't a single; no one puts on a live concert CD to hear one song. The listener has to make an emotional investment in listening to the record."
Richard "Vance" Van Horn, president of Sheffield Remote, in Baltimore, says the trend is pulling the remote recording business in opposite directions, with events seeking smaller audio trucks to do the recordings at lower cost and to make way for ever-larger video trucks, while at the same time the reaction strategy is to create more sophisticated trucks that can do what a Pro Tools rig plugged into a digital FOH console can't. "We did the New Orleans Jazz Festival this year, and everyone there — Dave Matthews, Bruce Springsteen — had their own recording systems with them," he says. "Also, a lot of the radio networks that used to do live shows, like the King Biscuit Flower Hour and Album Radio Network, are gone." Sheffield is also promoting itself as a location mixing service to offset fewer live recordings. The company recently mixed the Pixies' new LP with the truck.
Yianilos says the trend is also distancing remote companies from FOH mixers, with whom they have long had symbiotic technical and economic relationships. "We used to talk with the FOH mixer to establish the technical requirements of a project, and once they were satisfied that those could be met, he would hand us off to the band's business managers," he says. "That relationship is eroding now."
Kooster McAllister, owner of Record Plant Remote, says "The input arrangements are no longer automatically matching up, thanks to digital consoles being used on festivals," he explains. "There's a lot more Yamaha DM 2000 mixers in trucks to keep up with the proliferation of PM1D FOH consoles. Each entity has its own best way of setting up the inputs to switch between bands quickly. It's more complicated."
Another indicator of the future is the acquisition, last year, of leading remote recording company Effanel Music by XM Satellite Radio. Ironically, XM president and CEO Hugh Panero said it was the increased value of live music content that drove the move.
The future of remote recording likely matches the paradigm of all else digital. "Faster, smaller, cheaper," says Karen Brinton, owner of Remote Recording, which this year launched Polar Express, a more petite cruiser fitted with Pro Tools and other digital gear, to complement the company's more conventional, tape-equipped Silver Truck. "It's about downsizing," Brinton adds. "The space available for audio trucks is diminishing at the same time that they're not making live CDs anymore. It's a matter of fitting into the way things are going."
There's still call for larger vehicles for concert work, Brinton says, citing the "Heart of Gold" recording Remote Recording did for Neil Young this year in Nashville. "But the strategy is smaller and maybe more of it — adding more smaller trucks to cover a wider geographical range," she says.
Doing more with less is what digital enables. Changing the workflow and the culture of the business isn't as easily accomplished. Look for smaller trucks, more of them — both from the veterans and new start-ups — and look for them all to pursue more broadcast live music and more integration with streaming from the new heavyweights in the concert business, Live Nation and Network Live, which are taking the concert business to the Internet. Look for fewer people doing more — with less.
