There’s a lot to talk about this morning.
The Shins
Apologies to Shins fans waiting for the recording from last night. I did not attend, and wasted my ticket. Between the rain, my not feeling well, and lackluster reviews of the show and the venue, I did not really feel up to attending.
Server Outages and new Server Limits:
The Springsteen and Morrissey recordings have brought users to this site in record numbers. The total number of visits the day after the Springsteen concert was 118,000, roughly 5 times the record number of hits for a day on this site. The record number of visits have continued throughout the week. Those numbers have essentially crashed the server on multiple occasions, and have brought download speeds down to a trickle.
Unfortunately, my host has now put limits on my server capacity. The total number of visitors at any given time is limited to 150 distinct ip addresses. The total number of files one user can download at once is now limited to 5. And upload speed from the server has been capped at 2.5 megabytes per second. That’s a lot of speed if you’re downloading alone, but a slow speed if you divide it by 150.
There have been complaints and frustrations communicated in various forums on the web about the crashes and the speed reductions. I understand these complaints, but want users to know that these limits come from the host, and are a direct result of the popularity of the site.
Support the Artists:
I am capable of tracking the total number of purchases of official CD’s that are made through links on this site. I must say that I am profoundly disappointed at the number of people who download from this site, and the subsequent lack of purchases of official releases. I understand that of the 5000 people who downloaded Springsteen, most if not all of them already own Magic, or of the 3000 people who have downloaded Bjork, most or all already bought Volta.
It is the goal of this site that those 8000 people be exposed to other artists, and support those artists. Springsteen fans would be more than happy with the music of The Hold Steady, or The National, and Bjork fans would love Regina Spektor, or Animal Collective, or Kria Brekkan. In other words, if you already own Volta, click on the link and buy Begin to Hope!
nyctaper is currently considering implementing a limitation of downloads, where access would only be granted if confirmation of purchase of the official release is offered. This is something that we don’t want to install, but may be forced to do if users do not support the bands.
Support the Site:
The plan for this site was that donations and ad revenue would make it a not-too-expensive proposition. nyctaper was willing to operate at a loss in order to be able to implement a new model of music exchange and artist promotion. In this regard, the site has been a complete failure. The total number of donations thus far has amounted to $134. That represents less the price of the ticket for Springsteen. Commission ad revenue has generated zero. We did not envision being in the hole for roughly 12 thousand dollars within six months of the opening of the site.
Ironically, today we were accused of being bootleggers.
Plans for the Future:
At this point, nyctaper will continue to exist until the end of the shows listed below. We can not continue to afford to operate past that period without any significant user support.
Upcoming Events:
The Decemberists:
November 1, 2007
November 2, 2007, Terminal Five, NYC
Fiery Furnaces:
November 3, 2007, Hiro Ballroom, NYC
Pylon:
November 7, 2007, Mercury Lounge, NYC
Phil Lesh and Friends:
November 8, 2007, Phil Lesh Tickets at Nokia Theatre Times Square
mum:
November 9, 2007, Church of St. Paul NYC
November 10, 2007, Society for Ethical Culture Concert Hall NYC
Yo La Tengo:
November 16, 2007, Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
Pierce Turner:
December 2, 2007, Joe’s Pub NYC
December 9, 2007, Joe’s Pub NYC
Yo La Tengo:
December 6, 2007, Maxwell’s Hoboken NJ (12/6 sold out, click link for tickets to other nights)
I will not attend Neil Young at the United Palace because I can not afford the ticket price, and no user has offered to sponsor my attendance.
Recordings will be posted at this site for each of those concerts that nyctaper attends and records. As with any future plans, some of these concerts may not be attended or recorded by nyctaper, for reasons out of my control. Please check back to the site often for updates as other concerts will be added.
I have received numerous requests to attend and record certain specific events. Please bear in mind that my time and energy are limited. Specific requests are more likely to be successful if accompanied by a guest list pass, complimentary ticket or other incentives.
“nyctaper is currently considering implementing a limitation of downloads, where access would only be granted if confirmation of purchase of the official release is offered. This is something that we don’t want to install, but may be forced to do if users do not support the bands.”
This is, honestly, one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. People like what they like and aren’t going to go buy a Hold Steady record just because someone on the internet told them they’re like Bruce Springsteen. And if they did, they’d probably be pissed you made them buy a shitty Hold Steady record instead of using that money to buy a copy of a vastly superior Springsteen album they didn’t have.
The only result you’re gonna get out of implementing a d/l limit is fewer people will use your site and more will take your recordings and post them on trading sites that don’t make you pay to enjoy the music.
Also, how would something like that even work? What if I already owned all the albums you link to? Will I have to show you my receipt? Or would only those who purchase through your links (do you get a kickback?) get access?
I believe you have a serious misunderstanding of the nature of the limitation I am proposing. The idea is that in order to enjoy access to the live recording posted here, the user would have to prove artist support. I am not proposing that Springsteen users have to buy The Hold Steady in order to have access! I am suggesting, by way of example, that fans of one artist may be interested in being exposed to the music of another artist featured at this site.
The implementation is through a password which would only be given to a user with some proof of support, and not necessarily a click-through from this site. For example, you email to nyctaper a scan of your receipt for Magic and you get the password.
And to answer your “kickback” accusation. nyctaper gets 4% revenue on all sales generated on click-throughs. Thus far, that has amounted to less then 8 dollars, which is an insufficient amount to generate any reimbursement from amazon. I believe the minimum is $20, which I would reach at this rate sometime in the Fall of 2008.
Hey man, I love your site and fully understand what a drag it is when you don’t get the feedback you hope for.
Thanks for the great music, as a former taper I know it is a tremendous hassle to lug your gear out to shows and have to deal with the entire process of recording and then uploading.
Hoped to meet up with you at the phil show on 11/8, but circumstances led me to having to cancel my plans to attend.
semper phi!
People have taped shows in this city for 40 years. People have freely shared shows just as long. I appreciate that “nyctaper” (you, and you alone) are new to the game, and are keeping this alive. However, no one is donating to you for doing this. There’s already 100 sites up where people can share recordings, and no one has to pay a cent to get a show of an artist they already have, or one they want to check out. For whatever vanity reasons you started this site, rather than using one of the many established ones, I don’t know. But if you can’t “afford” to share recordings unless people pay you, I don’t know a single taping community you’d be welcome in.
Please don’t suggest that I’m new or ungrateful; I was asking for Wetlands board patches in ’91, sneaking D6’s into Roseland in ’93, and seeding tape trees weekly until .shn came about. I never told my branches or leaves that “I would cease to be able to copy for them unless I started receiving support.”
I’m hardly new, my friend. I taped at Wetlands, and Roseland back in the day–and many other places. You are obviously not familiar with this site, based upon your post.
You might also realize that pretty much every single “established” site accepts donations, and none of them are giving you the accounting details that I have posted here. Many of them (Zomb, Hunger City) in fact offer share ratio “credits” for people who donate. Dime gives people a complete share ratio waiver and VIP status for donating. In fact, the only “established” site that doesn’t take donations is bt.etree, which operates from free servers that are donated!
The difference with this site, of course, is that the hosting of actual large lossless files, and the bandwidth needed to transfer them, is a costly proposition. A torrent site operates, even one of the size of Dime, at a fraction of this site’s maintenance.
The other problem with “established” sites like Dime, etc, is that they permit the uploading of any recording, no matter the source or quality. Virtually every recording on this site is of extremely high quality. You might want to sample some of them.
Torrent sites also have an entire other litany of problems, the newest of which is the throttling of bit torrent usage by ISP’s such as comcast.
But this site is much more than just downloading and running (like torrent sites). The idea is to use the recordings to directly promote the artists and create an atmosphere where taping can be integrated with artist promotion and further a positive relationship between artists and fans.
I appreciate the “old guard” having been one of them. I too participated in “trees” in many different forums, including DAT heads, NYCheads, BUDD, the WeLL, and a slew of fan mailing lists. The beauty of the new technology is that you don’t have to “tree” or “vine” anything. My recordings are on the site within hours of the end of the show, in lossless format, and with all the necessary discussion, links and the like. Usually the recording is posted before people wake up in the morning after the show. Several afternoon recording were up later that evening.
No one has to pay a cent at this site. Just as people choose to volunteer to donate to “established” sites, they can also choose to donate here. Of the 20,000 or so people who have downloaded a recording this month from this site, only a small fraction needs to donate for this site to be able to offset some of its operating costs.
Next time you post an attack on this site, you might want to do maybe a tad of research before posting.
I call bullshit.
First:
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If you were truly taping for a long time, you wouldn’t have thrown an episode crying about Sonic Youth not making getting YOUR taping equipment in a priority. Anyone that’s taped more than 10 times has been shut out of supposed “taping friendly” shows. It’s not your right to tape a show, it’s a privilege. You sound spoiled and gave tapers a bad, whiny image, in this case DIRECTLY TO Sonic Youth. How do you think they view tapers now? Which goes to your next comment:
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Real positive relationship you made with Lee Renaldo. But here is your ultimate goal “integrated with artist promotion…” So you want to make money off this. If you just wanted to promote artists, you’d post yours up at Dime and etree. They distribute more music than a single user’s site ever will. Which continues on to
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Yeah, because they provide access to THOUSANDS of shows. You provide access to one taper’s worth. While your output is great, and I thank you for taping them, you have to see the incentive for donating to a large site rather than this.
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Actually, according to above:
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To finish:
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WOW. Honestly, I’m sorry. Now I just feel bad. Why don’t I help with your business model? First, fire the only company on the planet that charges a small site like this $1k a month for hosting that you seem to be using. Next, get a [free] blogspot account and post to [free] rapidshare storage. Then you can stop yelling at people who downloaded the Bruce show they went to, and trying to create a marketing opportunity for yourself.
See you all on etree.
I’m new around here but have been enjoying the site. I haven’t yet checked out the links for purchasing and I will. That said, a lot of people may well be buying but from other sources. I, for one, try to buy at shows since I figure a bigger % will go to the artist and I save on postage. My next preference is from the artist’s web site followed by a good indie store if I happen to be in a town/city that has them. After that I go for the least expensive online source. So don’t assume that the number that use your links are not buying.
I guess I should look before I ask but do you get any revenue from the links that you put back into the site? If so, then I might well put those sources a little higher on my preference list.
>I call bullshit.
>If you were truly taping for a long time
Well, I don’t know what is a “long time”, but there is a recording on this site that I mastered in 1998:
http://www.nyctaper.com/?p=48
I have posted masters on the web from 1994:
http://tela.sugarmegs.org/_asxtela/asxcards/gd1994-03-28.html
And I do have earlier masters that have not been circulated.
>stop yelling at people who downloaded the
>Bruce show they went to
Who am I “yelling” at? Seriously.
>See you all on etree
Can you get me one of those unlimited free servers with no expiration?
Oh yeah, buh bye.
“The other problem with established sites like Dime, etc, is that they permit the uploading of any recording, no matter the source or quality.”
I can’t speak for Dime as I don’t use it, but most sites have quite a strict policy when it comes to source/generation info when posting a recording.
As for the proof of purchase for access concept, it just seems like too much trouble for most to bother going through. I still think implementing that sort of restriction would result in lower traffic on your site while your recordings are shared on a site without such restrictions.
The only site that is strict in terms of source information is tradersden.org. Most sites will let the uploader get away with information like “CD Trade > EAC > you”. But even when complete source information is provided, that accuracy does not automatically translate into superior quality.
In terms of the support-for-access concept, at this point, I tend to agree with you. As posted above and also in numerous emails I’ve received in the last 24 hours, conscientious users have convinced me that they’ve done a lot of their artist support either by purchasing from local record shops, by buying from bands at shows (that’s how I bought the Meat Puppets CD for example), or through sites other than the monsters like amazon.
I guess that’s why I get most of my live music from The Trader’s Den. Can’t argue with what works.
Thank you for posting this. I saw Morrissey back in May in Denver and wished I had a good recording like this to cherish. I bought a t-shirt which was the best I could do. I haven’t bought Ringleader or YATQ, but I plan on it. In the meantime, I bought a ticket to the show & a $35 t-shirt and was happy to.
Thanks for your efforts, I appreciate them immensely.
I’m a big fan of this site for a few reasons:
1. I know the standard of all recordings will be high. Any problems which may cause reduced listening pleasure are noted upfront – many uploaders don’t do that, which can lead to disappointment.
2. Tracks are available individually. It’s possible to sample before committing to a huge zip file, as happens on other blogs.
3. No waiting for hoops to jump through as on rapid, mega, etc. servers.
4. It is much better than torrenting for those of us with slow upload speeds or data limits and ISPs which get nasty with sandvining tactics.
5. It feels good when “that” show I’ve been looking forward to appears at the top of the page.
6. I discovered the Fiery Furnaces here.
Dan, I’m amazed at the dedication you give to other aspects of your craft besides recording, editing etc. It must be hard work to get artist approval and OKs from venues sometimes. Such a good example helps to educate the clueless ones in the music biz to the benefits of fan recordings. They are the ones who should be giving you free tickets to the shows! and paying your taxi fares! and providing accommodation and groupies!
I’d also try to save money if it was my project. I have no idea how much it would cost at sites like Megaupload and Rapidshare, but would that be a possible solution? You mentioned the downside that files are deleted after a while – is that a huge problem? If demand is still high they can be re-upped. Or requests for trades could be made and the snail trade route would be kept alive!
nyctaper, thank you for providing us with your excellent recordings. I truly hope this model can continue. Good luck with phase two!