E-Mail This Article to a Friend The Clear Channel juggernaut rolls on 'Instant Live' grabs the concert-CD market, plus the punks are playing baseball

"Instant Live" grabs the concert-CD market

Clear Channel Entertainment, the company that’s devoured most of the US concert business, now has a bear hug on the market for creating on-the-spot live concert CDs. Although a number of companies including DiscLive and Kufala, as well as Clear Channel’s Cambridge-headquartered Instant Live arm, have been providing fans with CDs of shows they’ve just attended for several years now, in April, Clear Channel purchased a business process patent (as distinct from technology) from a Texas man that it says gives it exclusive rights. As business maneuvers go, this looks like a stroke of genius. Although the market is still in its infancy, DiscLive, for example, estimated it would sell $500,000 in live CDs this spring alone. Some of Instant Live’s competitors and some bands say the patent purchase is akin to carpetbagging. Mike Luba, manager of String Cheese Incident, alleges that promoters within Clear Channel’s national network of venues blocked the band from using on-site CD-burning equipment even before the company owned the patent. And according to a report in Rolling Stone, the Pixies were recently informed by Clear Channel that DiscLive couldn’t burn and sell CDs at their locations.

"This segment of the market has to be protected for competition to grow into what it can ultimately become," says the founder of one on-site record-and-burn company who requested anonymity. "We’re talking about a segment of the music business that could grow to be worth $2 billion, where competing technology can lead to real improvements in quality and other areas. The only way that’s going to happen is if creativity and competition are allowed to flourish."

Steve Simon, a former music-business attorney and the director of the Instant Live project, says that’s Clear Channel’s goal. "We’re a big company with a lot of assets, and to paraphrase Stan Lee, being big comes with big responsibilities. We’re trying to expand and develop the format and to provide access to anybody who is treating it responsibly.

"We believe the acquisition of the patent was a good strategic move on our part, and it enables us to increase our investment in this format and expand our business model so it’s more artist-friendly. It provides artists with the opportunity to combat piracy of live shows. And we’re interested in working with bands and other third parties to develop this format." Given Clear Channel’s ownership of most of the country’s major concert venues, Simon says, "We believe we have the best value proposition in one-stop shopping for any act that wants to do this."

Still, the Dead, the Who, and Phish have so far found Clear Channel’s offer resistible, preferring to record their shows themselves and sell them a day or more afterward — which apparently does not infringe on Instant Live’s patent. (In a related development, the Vans Warped Tour has announced that it has teamed up with on-line entertainment distributor Altnet to sell day-after concert-video downloads.)The good news for the tapers who follow bands like the Dead and the Allman Brothers with their own recording gear is that Clear Channel will not interfere with that practice. "Some of our best customers are tapers," Simon explains. "They’re often the first ones ordering CDs after a show, and we’ve gotten some e-mails saying, ‘The sound quality’s great. Now I don’t have to lug all my gear to concerts.’ "

Instant Live entered the business on February 28, 2003, recording and selling post-show a CD of local band Machinery Hall’s performance at the Paradise here in Boston. Since then, Instant Live has grown rapidly, and it now has a system in place that can cover all of Clear Channel’s venues and many others. Its recordings are available in 350 stores nationwide and via such major e-tailers as Amazon and CD Baby thanks to a deal with the Toothface Distribution unit of the Boston-based Newbury Comics chain. And like the other live concert burn-and-sell companies, it has a Web site that offers earlier recordings for sale and pre-sells discs of upcoming performances. Simon reports that Instant Live will soon offer MP3 downloads of concerts through multiple providers, and that it’s striking a deal with one of that business’s leading companies.

He adds that Instant Live is game to bargain with bands and other "third parties" who would like to record and sell CDs in Clear Channel concert facilities. "We’re also writing checks for the right to do this ourselves. Kiss is touring this summer, and they’re playing a number of House of Blues venues. We had to come to a financial agreement with House of Blues to use Instant Live in those venues."

Whoever provides the service, record-and-burn deals are good for artists, who typically negotiate a much higher royalty on these discs than on label releases. A performer might get $10 or more from a concert recording retailing for $20 to $25. On a major label, the artist’s cut could be $2 or less.

Instant Live announced another coup last week: the signing of Jewel, its first artist who’s also signed to a major label. This summer, the company is also offering recordings by the Allman Brothers, moe, Michael Franti and Spearhead, George Clinton, Dickey Betts, Buffalo Tom, Kay Hanley, the Smithereens, and others.

— Ted Drozdowski