It’s Time To Bring Back Live Concert Albums
Just me?
This idea is related to last week’s topic but I’m here to argue that artists should release live concert albums. But before you click away, hear me out.
The Return of Concert Films
One could argue (and I would) that concert films never went away completely. They just went out of style and had a small demographic for a while. However, within the last few years, there’s been a surge in popularity for the genre.
For my early fanbase, you of course, know about the variations of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour films. Those were great in its various theatrical and streaming releases. You also have various concert films from Beyonce, BLACKPINK, and a few others. All of which have done exceptionally well in the box office.
But despite all of these films being released in one form or another, they’re all on screen. Not a single one of them has been released in album form, and that’s a shame.
A quick search on social media and you’ll see plenty of people asking for them. And you have quite a few folks (including myself) creating so-called “bootleg” live albums from these concert films. Maybe the demand isn’t super high, but the number of people asking for a concert film is non-zero.
I understand that it’s a completely different game in terms of rights and whatnot, and that it’s not as easy as taking the audio from the film and simply stripping the video, and cutting them up into separate tracks. I completely understand that. But I suppose I’m also the kind of person who’s constantly asking for proper instrumental versions of albums as well. Maybe there should be a separate streaming service for us? (Kidding, of course. There’s too many music streaming services already.)
I remember watching concerts on TV and acquiring a few concert films on physical media growing up. I think this is why I love live albums. I for one am glad that they’re making a comeback. But I hope that we’re able to get concert films from more than just the world’s top artists. I’d love to have smaller artist’s sets available as well.
The Era of Music Streaming
But in the era of music streaming, where you can effectively play anything you want with a tap on a screen? That sounds easy in theory, but as we all know, it’s a much more complex story behind the scenes.
Without much industry knowledge in this space, I’d wager that getting people to the movie theater nets substantially more money than releasing an album. I’m so confident that I’d say it would take you streaming a live album at least a few hundred times before an artist could make the same amount of money from a single movie ticket.
And I think that’s just the unfortunate reality. I think the amount of work that needs to be done compared to the relative return on investment just isn’t there for concert albums. That’s why, for the most part, concert films don’t really make it to video streaming services. They get a theatrical release and disappear. I’d wager it’s a similar problem.
And that breaks my heart. I’m a serial physical media collector for most mediums and would love to have a concert album, even if it’s only available on vinyl, CD, or cassette. I’d even take it a step further and say that I would love for the films to break out of their theatrical release and be released physically on Blu-Ray or DVD. But that’s just wishful thinking at this point.
Conclusion
I think this is more of a brain dump than anything else. This came up pretty last minute but I was just looking at the various concert films I had copies of and how almost none of them have a proper album release. And if they do, they’re download-only, and not available on the streaming platforms.
This sort of coincides with what I wrote last week about local music files. Because for now, the two are almost mutually exclusive. While I won’t provide methods on how to obtain said files or how to edit and export them into a certain music library, it’s currently the only way if you want your favorite live concert films in your music library. That, of course, is also a big reason as to why it’s an absolute requirement that I use a service that can provide local file support.