YouTube & Video

OutListen’s Crowdsourced Concert Videos: Creating A New Music Format

OutlistenGuest post by Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

Attending a show is different now. Everybody's holding up a cellphone shooting video instead of watching and listening. This doesn't have to be a 100-percent bad thing, however. A startup called OutListen intends to turn this sow's ear into a silk purse by encouraging concertgoers to upload their smartphone footage to an online calendar.

If enough people upload footage from the same show, OutListen will cobble it all together by synching the audio waveforms (clever), so that the band (or more likely their "people") can add the high-quality audio track they hopefully remembered to record at the show, and then release the result as a new type of music product: the crowdsourced concert video.

According to its teaser video, OutListen will be a "user-generated media database for live concerts and events catering mainly but not exclusively to performing musical groups… [and it is] designed to be the place where live music lives on the internet, where lovers of performers can view, share, and combine their own personal concert footage all in one place."

The sound quality of many cellphone show recordings is the pits (although that situation has improved a great deal; I shot this Javelin footage with an iPhone 4 at Terminal 5 in New York, and the sound turned out okay, whereas my old FlipCam would distort the heck out of amplified sound).

OutListen solves that problem, assuming that participating bands record their shows using something that sounds decent — ideally by plugging a recorder right into the mixing desk, which isn't very hard. (Bonus: the band, not their label, then owns this sound recording and can sell it and these OutListen videos without giving the money to anyone except the songwriter/publisher.)

If everything goes as planned, this process will create "an incredible amateur and professional hybrid concert experience," in the company's words. Not only should the band be able to distribute the video, but fans will be able to create their own experience of the concert by mixing between the various angles, then sharing their creation.

Kyte has dabbled with this concept a bit, and I remember writing up a Daft Punk show for Wired.com that featured footage from attendee's cellphones, but paired with high-quality audio from the mixing desk (but can't find the URL). It took a while, but a company is finally focusing on this promising area.

The only hurdle we can foresee: Alerting bands that they should record all of their live shows at high quality, to avoid the unfortunate scenario of multiple fans uploading video to OutListen, only to find that no high-quality audio exists. Assuming the company figures that out, we have high hopes for OutListen (no launch date as of yet).

(via MTV O Music Awards blog; image modified from OutListen.com)

Guest Post on 01/13/2012 in YouTube & Video | Permalink | Comments (2)
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  1. Neat concept but I imagine it’ll be very difficult to pull off, due in part to one notable misconception: if the artist is signed to an exclusive record deal (as most likely are) then the label *will* own the master. Bands aren’t allowed to just record their live shows and sell them if they’re signed to a deal.
    The other problem is dealing with licensing issues as between label/band/venue/promoter/fans for the audiovisual rights. Considered in the abstract, the fan would own the AV rights for the video he/she shoots. However, the ticket (license) to enter the venue probably conditions admittance on not creating a video, so the fans’ rights in the videos are questionable. Presumably OutListen will require users to assign whatever rights they may have at the time they upload, but to who?
    Even if OutListen is able to retroactively acquire the rights to the videos (and it’s impossible to do so as a work for hire, thus potentially creating situation where thousands of fans are filing termination notices 35 or 40 years from now), on whose behalf are they doing so? Many deals, both between the promoter and artist, and promoter and venue, limit the parties’ rights to record and who has rights in those works varies based on circumstances. The logistics of clearing rights with all these parties seems to me to be cost-prohibitive. Absent blanket licenses (which would be virtually impossible to handle given the various parties and circumstances), or at least a coordinated effort between OutListen and the artist/label/venue/promoter in advance to record a show, prospects look very dim for this project.
    Many bands already have soundboard recordings of every show – in my view that’s by far the easiest element of this. Clearing all of the rights and getting these different parties to all come together to sign off is going to be a monumental undertaking.

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