You may remember the short-lived indieriver.net bootleg-trading service. It was shut down for a number of reasons, the main one being that it proved technically challenging for many users, who just wanted high-quality MP3s and didn’t care about all the nerdy lossless audio and all that, much less being interested in trying to figure out BitTorrent, etc. As a result, the service was shut down in favor of something less daunting: archive.org’s Live Music Archive. That’s not to say that LMA is easy, but we’ll explain it for you.
On any show page, you can stream the audio to check to see if you want to download it. You can also embed this on any Web page that you like. If, for example, you recorded a show and wanted to announce that fact to the world, it’s as simple as using that embedding function.
If you’re wanting just the MP3s in a simple convenient format, click the “VBR ZIP” link in the left-hand sidebar. You’ll get a happy ZIP file with all the MP3s—nothing more, nothing less. Drop that in iTunes and you’ll be listening in seconds.
Now, if you care about lossless audio, MD5 sums, metadata, et al … that’s all still available. The easiest way to download everything is to hit the “All Files: HTTP” link. LMA used to support download via FTP, but sadly that is no more.
Go forth and download. I’ll be getting the Derek backlog up I have from all my taping, plus the shows that other tapers shared, out on the Live Music Archive repository for Derek Webb soon. You may pester me in the comments if this goes slowly. Happy downloading!
Is that first one a Caedmon’s show? Shouldn’t Caedmon’s Call have a separate listing on there?
In any case, thanks for getting this going – I have a few shows I’ll contribute myself one of these days.
No, it’s one of the rare solo shows he did back then. Yes, Caedmon’s Call should have a repository, but I haven’t gotten the request through and approved yet. Patience.
Brilliant! Looking forward to checking out some shows. Thanks for all your work Geof…. and all those that have submitted.
I have a board mix recording with crowd mics from a festival show summer of ’09 waiting to be edited/mixed then I can upload it for you.