One of the most classic ways of “piracy” that has been around since the start of live rock and pop music in the 60s has been the “illegal” recording of live gigs and concerts. This was called “bootleg recordings” and happened when someone in the audience succeeded to smuggle into the venue a portable recorder connected to a microphone that would be pointed at the center of the PA system. Simple as that: record what you’re listening to (if security staff doesn’t notice what you’re doing!) This yielded what is called “audience recordings”, which got better from the 70s on as the technology improved and made equipment smaller year by year, growing a very big industry with the advent of easy-duplicating cassette tapes and such. The recordings also improved greatly in sound quality and some of them are really good documents of the live sound of mythic rock bands at that era such as Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones. There are also some recordings sourced directly from the mixing desk on to tape (soundboard recordings) or from an FM broadcast of the era. That recordings are the best sounding ones almost for sure although some of them suffer from not having enough audience response.

A bootleg front cover
Since the 80s on, these bootlegs generated a big market around them, causing festival organisation to run raids on the audiences and such. For more info on the history of bootlegging, I recommend that you read Clinton Heylin’s excellent book “Bootleg! The rise and fall of the secret recording industry”. Continue reading