Live albums / bootlegs - Suggestions - Forums : Best Ever Albums

albummaster
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I've been having a useful chat via PM with a few people about how BEA should treat the self-released live recordings of individual concerts that a lot of artists are now releasing. All of these releases would appear to 'qualify' for BEA in the sense that they are legitimate releases authorised by the artist exceeding the minimum length of album that BEA currently permits. Just a few examples of artists releasing concert recordings would be Gov't Mule, Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen etc.

In the past, we've had seminal albums such as Woodstock, The Who Live at Leeds etc that definitely deserve their place in history. Should BEA have some kind of gatekeeping rule to prevent flooding of the database to disallow certain types of live recording, or should BEA have an open door to include potentially every authorised recording of a music concert in recorded history? (& is it unfair to exclude anything?) (BEA has a 'no bootlegs' rule, so this is just about authorised recordings).

The main issue from BEA's point of view is that there are potentially thousands of releases (or millions?) that are not currently listed on BEA that could be added to the site which would have the effect of flooding the discographies of many artists, making their studio albums more difficult to distinguish.

One option to prevent this happening would be to add some additional filters to allow people to filter out live recordings from charts and discographies in the same way that certain pages currently allow users to filter out compilations, but how useful is it to have these live concert recordings in the first place, and how can we distinguish between an individual performance that should be allowed and one that shouldn't (& is it even possible/desirable)?

The internet has changed how people publish & consume music and BEA needs to grow with this (but still keep it's raison d'etre which is to help people to discover the best albums in history). If BEA was flooded with 11,000 Grateful Dead live recordings, is that really helping people to discover the best albums in history, and if they were classed as legitimate for BEA, what would this mean to the scope of the site? (does it change anything?)

Sorry for a bit of a rambling post, but just wondered if anybody had any thoughts.

AM

Norman Bates

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Age: 51
Location: Paris, France

albummaster wrote:

should BEA have an open door to include potentially every authorised recording of a music concert in recorded history?

This, IMO.

albummaster wrote:

how useful is it to have these live concert recordings in the first place,

I don't know how 'useful' it is, but if a user ligitimately thinks it belongs to one of their chart, and if the album is legit, what else is there to do but accept it?

albummaster wrote:

If BEA was flooded with 11,000 Grateful Dead live recordings, is that really helping people to discover the best albums in history,

These live albums would probably never make it to the top 300 of any given year (and therefore wouldn't prevent anybody from seeing what the best are); and even if so, wouldn't that mean that, according to BEA, it's one of the best albums of that year? What if one of these live albums truly is one of the best and the general public of BEA never knows it?

pa
as it happens

Gender: Male
Age: 44
Location: Italia

I don't want to be too pragmatic, but the first thought that has crossed my mind was:
who's gonna moderate this new flood??
_________________
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Last edited by pa on 05/29/2017 21:09; edited 1 time in total

albummaster
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Location: Spain
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thanks Norman and I also relate to what pa is saying.

Norman Bates wrote:

albummaster wrote:

should BEA have an open door to include potentially every authorised recording of a music concert in recorded history?

This, IMO.

The danger of this is that it opens BEA up to a flood of releases e.g. home recordings published to a personal website (including DJ mixes & studio albums) from 'unknown' artists. How should BEA differentiate between different types of artist, or shouldn't there be any differentiation? The internet has blurred a lot of boundaries. People don't need a recording contract any more. The previous gatekeepers were the record companies. They'd only sign somebody up, or release something, if they felt they could make a bit of money (not debating the rights or wrongs of this), but now anybody has the ability to become their own 'label' and release what they want.

Norman Bates wrote:

I don't know how 'useful' it is, but if a user ligitimately thinks it belongs to one of their chart, and if the album is legit, what else is there to do but accept it?

Basically confers the role of gatekeeper onto BEA users.

Norman Bates wrote:

These live albums would probably never make it to the top 300 of any given year (and therefore wouldn't prevent anybody from seeing what the best are); and even if so, wouldn't that mean that, according to BEA, it's one of the best albums of that year? What if one of these live albums truly is one of the best and the general public of BEA never knows it?

I think some additional filters could help to keep the site focused on it's core function (e.g. filter charts to include/exclude live albums) and I do agree with what you are saying about the danger of missing an important release (if the gatekeeping policy was too strict). However, I think there does need to be a clearer set of guidelines around these releases to help keep the BEA database as trustworthy & reliable as possible (very difficult to do if the database is flooded).

RoundTheBend
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albummaster wrote:

thanks Norman and I also relate to what pa is saying.

Norman Bates wrote:

albummaster wrote:

should BEA have an open door to include potentially every authorised recording of a music concert in recorded history?

This, IMO.

The danger of this is that it opens BEA up to a flood of releases e.g. home recordings published to a personal website (including DJ mixes & studio albums) from 'unknown' artists. How should BEA differentiate between different types of artist, or shouldn't there be any differentiation? The internet has blurred a lot of boundaries. People don't need a recording contract any more. The previous gatekeepers were the record companies. They'd only sign somebody up, or release something, if they felt they could make a bit of money (not debating the rights or wrongs of this), but now anybody has the ability to become their own 'label' and release what they want.

Basically confers the role of gatekeeper onto BEA users.

I think some additional filters could help to keep the site focused on it's core function (e.g. filter charts to include/exclude live albums) and I do agree with what you are saying about the danger of missing an important release (if the gatekeeping policy was too strict). However, I think there does need to be a clearer set of guidelines around these releases to help keep the BEA database as trustworthy & reliable as possible (very difficult to do if the database is flooded).

I think you've said it, but do you mind going into more detail about how it effects the site better? Help us understand your concerns about non-label releases, local artist releases, soundcloud only releases, etc. and how that would effect the site negatively (I think you are the only one qualified to really see the innerworkings of the site well enough to see what real effect it would have).

Using Norman's logic, if a less legit album does make it to the site, it likely won't have a large effect on the overall rankings? It'll be ranked 54,000th or something, right? But if everyone thinks that there's this single live official release of Grateful dead is their best work... perhaps it should be allowed if it indeed doesn't effect the credibility of the site.

One difficulty I do see is the availability of these releases. Just because something is on YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, Archive.org or the band website right now, in 4 years, there's a decent chance it won't even be available to the public anymore. Those who downloaded it at that time lucked out, but it feels like almost a private release (which the site doesn't allow since nobody else can listen to it and judge the work for themselves). This has been my experience with a few albums, and for site credibility, I totally understand this point of view.

I second the use of flags and suggest something similar to what Wikipedia uses:

1) Studio Albums
2) EP
3) Live Albums
4) Singles (possibly not helpful on this site?)
5) Compilation Albums

In addition perhaps there could be digital release only flags?

As we discussed in PM though... the need to catalog everything an artist has officially released isn't quite the focus of the site. It's to list the best... then again, the best for a certain year or decade for a user might actually not be what everyone else is going crazy about, and if it is only 3 users, why not let them have their voice? I don't think that'd effect credibility (but since I don't know the innerworkings of the site... maybe I'm wrong)?

albummaster
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Gender: Male
Location: Spain
Site Admin

sethmadsen wrote:

I think you've said it, but do you mind going into more detail about how it effects the site better? Help us understand your concerns about non-label releases, local artist releases, soundcloud only releases, etc. and how that would effect the site negatively (I think you are the only one qualified to really see the innerworkings of the site well enough to see what real effect it would have).

Aside from the users, the most important thing on BEA is the database. Without the database, everything you see on this site would not exist. A lot of time is spent by a lot of people making sure that the database contents are seen as reliable. If BEA did not have a reliable database, anybody visiting the site would not be able to trust the information within it, and people would not want to use the lists here.

Granted, it is impossible to have a 100% accurate database & no other site manages this either. However, it is incredibly important the BEA database stays as reliable as possible so that viewed from outside, the site is seen as trustworthy and users of the site can rely on the information. The introduction of unverifiable releases would pose a great problem to the integrity of the database as people would be able to upload anything without requiring to prove that the release exists & is real or authentic.

Currently, every release on BEA (bar any that shouldn't be here!) is a real and genuine 'official' release and can be proved to exist because the details can be found online, or they exist in record stores.

Quote:

Using Norman's logic, if a less legit album does make it to the site, it likely won't have a large effect on the overall rankings? It'll be ranked 54,000th or something, right? But if everyone thinks that there's this single live official release of Grateful dead is their best work... perhaps it should be allowed if it indeed doesn't effect the credibility of the site.

Provided that the release is 'official' (not a bootleg) and endorsed by the artist or copyright owned by the label (i.e it is legal) then these types of release should be perfectly OK.

Quote:

One difficulty I do see is the availability of these releases. Just because something is on YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, Archive.org or the band website right now, in 4 years, there's a decent chance it won't even be available to the public anymore. Those who downloaded it at that time lucked out, but it feels like almost a private release (which the site doesn't allow since nobody else can listen to it and judge the work for themselves). This has been my experience with a few albums, and for site credibility, I totally understand this point of view.

This is an issue with digital releases. I'm not sure at the moment how to resolve this. Perhaps at the time the album is published a URL could be added to the admin page and this could be verified somehow. Not sure what happens if the release gets pulled after 30 seconds because they've linked to the wrong file or haven't got permission and suchlike but there's always going to be exceptions.

Quote:

I second the use of flags and suggest something similar to what Wikipedia uses:

1) Studio Albums
2) EP
3) Live Albums
4) Singles (possibly not helpful on this site?)
5) Compilation Albums

Most of these already exist but not going down the route of adding an EP attribute as all releases on BEA are treated as 'albums' regardless of what the artist decides to call them.

Quote:

In addition perhaps there could be digital release only flags?

Not sure about this at the moment because that type of flag might need changing during the life of the release (& all other data is static)

Quote:

then again, the best for a certain year or decade for a user might actually not be what everyone else is going crazy about, and if it is only 3 users, why not let them have their voice? I don't think that'd effect credibility (but since I don't know the innerworkings of the site... maybe I'm wrong)?

agree with this sentiment, and provided the album is legit then there wouldn't be a problem with this.