AMCS

It used to be that if you wanted a recording of a live show that you had to hunt round record fairs, weekend markets or car boot sales. When you did this, you usually ended up paying over the odds for a Nth generation tape that had to be played at full volume before it sounded even halfway decent. You can still buy bootlegs through auction sites and out of the boots of cars but there is no need and indeed, anyone who will sell you a recording of a live show should be avoided! It is not the done thing to sell these recordings - they should always be traded freely!!!

Thanks to the interweb trading high quality recordings of live shows, which capture the true essence of the artist, is now very easy indeed. There are still many recordings where the sound quality is not great, though these can be improved by using software to remaster them. However, there are many more excellent quality recordings of FM broadcasts, shows recorded direct from the soundboard, and very good audience recordings that can now be accessed freely. No more lining the bootlegger's pockets!

Read on to find out how to start your own collection through on-line and off-line trading, learn a bit about lossless audio formats and trading rules, and also about some of the software that I've found useful for managing my live music collection.

On-Line Trading

If you have a PC with bags of hard disk space and a broadband internet connection then on-line trading is the easiest way to start a collection and that's how I got my collection going. I did already have a few tapes, vinyl discs and CDs which were picked up years ago at record fairs but those have now been supplanted by the digital stuff.

To get started in on-line trading you also need a BitTorrent client (such as uTorrent) and then you need to join one of the on-line trading communities such as Dime or The Traders' Den. You can also join a Direct Connect hub such as The International Echoes Hub and share using a DC client (such as DC++).

Whichever sites you subscribe to, you then just follow their rules and guidance regarding the download and sharing of material. They all have good FAQs and help pages (certainly better than any I could write) and these will help you to get going.

Once you do get started be sure to try and maintain a high share ratio - higher than 1.0 is preferred.

Off-Line Trading

Off-line trading is not so popular as it once was because of the ease of on-line trading but it's still a great way of building a collection.

To participate, you can join a trading mailing list or search for trading lists posted on-line by other traders. If you see a recording you are interested in then you can ask it's owner to trade a copy of his/her recording for one that you own. You then exchange copies of your recordings by post.

Don't worry if you don't have any recordings to trade. Established traders will often give you a copy of a show if you agree to send them blank media to copy the show onto and provide a self-addressed return envelope with the appropriate postage attached. After all it is an open, friendly community and trader's believe in making live recordings available to all - with the understanding that if you like an artist enough to get a live recording you'll do the decent thing and support the artist by buying their official product too.

To date I've completed just a handful of off-line trades, have had no problems and have gained some excellent recordings as a result. So this is a good option to consider if you don't have access to broadband interweb, for example.

If you're looking to get started or to extend your collection then have a look at My Trading List and see if anything grabs your attention.

Lossless Audio Files

The preferred audio file format for trading seems to be the Free Lossless Audio Codec (.flac), though many recordings are offered in the older Shorten (.shn) format.

I have a collection of files in both formats and can't detect any difference between them as regards their sound quality. There are differences in the size of the files encoded in these formats which relate to the encoding level selected. I'm not going to go into the technical details of that process because there are plenty of other places that do - plus it kind of goes over my head ;-)

However, I have a preference for the .flac format because it has better support for file tags. These are very useful for naming files within your audio player of choice - just like ID tags do for the .mp3 files you import into Winamp, iTunes or whatever.

You may also find some files offered in Monkey Audio (.ape) format. I haven't got any of this type in my collection but only because I've never seen the format offered by any of the online trading sites I use. I'm therefore not sure how accepted they are within the trading community.