Live music comes to iTunes
Apple has opened a new section in its iTunes store which specializes in live music, partnering with mega-promoter Live Nation and offering special live tracks in audio and video.
Apple has been collecting the live music it records at its New York City Soho store, among others, for some time. Now they have added a large number live recordings made by Live Nation at their 80 live venues across America. The combination of those two sets of recordings has given Apple enough live music in total to open a special section for it in the iTunes store, according to a Wired article.
The line-up of tunes is impressive. Apple has a large number of its own live recordings, featuring the likes of Sonic Youth, Regina Spektor, Pete Yorn, The Rapture, Kings of Leon, Gnarls Barkley, The New Pornographers, and many others. Live Nation brings such notable performers as Duffy, OK Go, Plain White T’s and Ziggy Marley to the party. Taken together, that’s not a bad list of bands with which to open a specialty music store, which is just what Apple has done.
The store will also offer concert videos featuring an equally impressive lists of artists. Live concert videos have been available on iTunes previously, with Apple putting them on sale in their digital store a week before the video DVDs became available. Now these videos will go on sale in the special live section alongside the live audio content from Apple and Live Nation. Concert video pricing is expected to be between $8 and $13, with audio shows typically costing $8.
The digital rights for live performances have often been seen as a bit of a snake-pit, which is what has made legal audio and video recordings relatively rare. There were just too many people involved in live concerts, including the band, their label, the publisher, the songwriters and manager, plus the venue and the promoter. In the end, it was often not possible to get sign-off from everyone involved. This situation is somewhat easier for Apple and Live Nation, since they already own the venues where the recordings are made and the sound recording rights to the shows.
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