Exclusive: OpenLIVE inks deals with 11 Aus and UK live venues

High-resolution music download store and live recording platform OpenLIVE has installed its recording hardware in 10 Australian venues and one UK live venue.

The Melbourne-based company now has its custom designed and built MasterBuilder hardware installed in Melbourne venues The Corner Hotel, Northcote Social Club, Shebeen, Max Watts (ex-Hi-Fi), The Reverence and The Evelyn, as well as Sydney venue Oxford Arts Factory, Perth’s Astor Theatre, Brisbane’s Triffid and Coolangatta Hotel on the Gold Coast. In the UK, the hardware is installed in The Silver Bullet, Finsbury Park.

The hardware and supporting cloud infrastructure was created by OpenLIVE co-founder & Audio Technology Director Simon Tait, and Co-Founder Richard Powell. The system schedules 24-bit/48kHz recordings of live audio performances remotely at each venue before OpenLIVE’s autonomous mixing and mastering is applied to the recording.

OpenLIVE soft-launchedin August with over 1.5m tracks from established and emerging artists, and now has around 2.5m Hi-Res audio tracks, which can be downloaded intact, without lossy compression.

While OpenLIVE is yet to make public links available to artists for them to begin using the system, it already hosts well over 100 artist-created profiles on the platform.

OpenLIVE CEO Dale Moore told TMN: “Given we haven’t had any public links available as yet and we’re still working through beta-testing, we’re very excited about progress so far. We have validation that Artists see value in what we’re doing.”

Early next month OpenLIVE will officially launch its Artist Dashboard where artists can schedule, edit and manage their live recordings from shows played at the partner venues.

Moore told TMN the MasterBuilder system allows artists to book in sets to be recorded and that it can sense if the band are playing overtime (re: an encore).

“We’ve built in a feature whereby even if the MasterBuilder is due to stop recording, it will keep recording until it detects that the band has finished playing,” said Moore.

Following that, a mixed, mastered and optimised version of the artist’s recording will appear on their Dashboard in large single waveform. Artists can then insert track marks, remove tracks they don’t like or don’t have the rights to, insert artwork, name the relevant rights holders, and push the recording live to monetise on the OpenLIVE platform.

“At the moment, this can take up to 72 hours to get through our distribution chain and onto our store,” said Moore. “We expect to bring this down significantly over time with the goal being within an hour of the performance being complete, pending the artist completing the ’cutting up’ of the waveform into tracks.”

For now, while it’s in the beta-test stage, there’s no up-front cost for artists.

“This will change down the track but for now, artists can go and record as much as they like without incurring a cost,” Moore said. “They’ll get a free copy of the recording to download and it’s theirs to keep”.

Moore said there is also no obligation for artists to do anything with the recording.

“Sure, we’d love for the artist to make it available on our platform,” added Moore. “However if it doesn’t fit in with their album schedule, or they simply don’t want to release it, well again, they’ve got a recording of their performance to critique themselves or just show their friends.”

The venue partnerships follow OpenLIVE’s team-up with Dan Sultanto sell a limited edition recording of his sold-out National Theatre concert on his upcoming tour. The agreement will also see OpenLIVE record his November 18 show at Northcote Social Club, as well as his shows at a few other venues on the tour.

The platform is expected to launch its consumer services in the UK and US during the first half of 2016 when it will also make some of the hi-res audio recordings available for download.

“We’re really hopeful that one day, through having early recordings of [artists’] performances, we’ll be part of the many people and businesses that help emerging artists break through by giving them demo content, ability to critique and improve their live performances, and maybe help them make a name for being a great live act,” said Moore.