Comment of the Moment: The Crowd Sourcing and the Damage Done... or Not?

Should we post "crowd sourced" full concert videos?
Lots of chatter about the recently uploaded video on YouTube of the full Neil Young concert at Carnegie Hall on January 7, 2014.

Our exclusive Shakey poll results show that -- surprisingly -- most fans are OK with all of this. (Polls are still open if you have voted as of yet.)

So, to tape or not to tape? To upload or not to upload? To crowd source or not? And so on and on and on.

The Comment of the Moment is from The Crowd Sourcing and the Damage Done... or Not? by Dan1:

I was at the Jan 7th Carnegie Hall show and will savor the memories for the rest of my life.

I chose to live in the moment and respect those around me and didn't take any pictures. I was in a lower balcony seat and during the encore noticed some jerks taking tons of pictures from the first few rows and it clearly pissed Neil off and was over-all distracting and very selfish. I think there should be a distinction between videos taken which are done discreetly and tastefully so nobody, not Neil or other fans, are disturbed. Those are technically not allowed but as mentioned in other posts, bootlegs are as old as the music and the policy should be no harm no foul. On the other hand, obnoxious people who disrupt Neil or other fans should be subjected to consequences ...

Personally, I watched the crowd sourced video last week and loved it and will cherish the fact i can relive that amazing night. I think it would be punative for Neil or Elliot to take it down ... I'd be more than happy to send Neil and Elliot a check for $20 or $30 if they tell me where to mail the check, seriously ... its the same as Trunk Show ... please just put it out we're dying to pay for it, same for Archives II, III, IV, V, ect ... but bottom line my view is that I'll buy pretty much whatever they put out ... bought the archives in BD, bought most of the vinyl albums years ago, bought most of them again as CDs and DVDs ... my watching this crowd sourced video of Carnegie Hall will only cause me to BUY MORE from Neil not less ... I'll see more shows, ect ...

as an aside, I think the comments about Neil pricing out fans is a bit naive ... these shows are special because they're in small venues ... tickets for Carnegie Hall were between $50-200 ($50 is an awesome price btw), and tickets for on sale for weeks before selling out, then they were available on Stub Hub for $1000s the week of the shows ... its clear that Neil left tons of money on the table and anyone complaining about prices is just a complainer ... in summary, my guess is that this crowd sourced video will get around into more hands than just about anything Neil has for many years and he'll see renewed interest from fans who buy up lots of old records and sales and interest will spike ... thats what I hope happens and what I think will happen ...

bottom line, especially if these were'nt taped by Neil's camp, you cannot suppress great art ... the Carnegie Hall shows were highlight shows, they were an epic stop over in Neil's storied career ... in this day and age its just tough to control it and I do think the artist deserves to get compensation somehow but I think the days of locking things up in the vault for decades seems to have ended, for better or worse.

I say embrace it, the way the Grateful Dead did, make a recorders sections or something and enforce rules that are respectful to the artist and the audience but hey its Neil's show ...

Thanks Dan! Obviously, we struggled with all of this but made the call that we did.

We discussed this at length last night on Thrashers Wheat Radio, if you caught that. If not, download the podcast, if interested in our thought process.

The horse left the barn and has done and gone viral. Let us hope all for the better.

---

---