Music Site Review: Concert Vault

There was once a time when the only way you could get hold of the pop music you liked was by visiting a record store. If you didn’t own either a record player or a tape deck of some kind, the only way to listen to your favourite music was the radio. Which meant you were at the mercy of whatever your local station played. So if you didn’t like the top 40 of the day you were usually out of luck. As for seeing your favourite band perform, that was only possible if they happened to go on tour and show up in your home town. If they were really popular they might show up on a television variety show and lip sync to one or two of their songs.

Prior to the 1980s, MTV and Much Music, there was precious little live music on television in North America. The one or two shows – The Midnight Special and Rock Concert – to feature bands in concert were on late at night and the sound was usually crap as it was coming through your television’s single tinny speaker. While advances in video and digital technology gave us more access to music through an increased variety of sources, we were still limited by the technology available for playing and transmitting. If you were lucky enough your television might have been able to hook up to your stereo, but the signal being broadcast was still only mono so you weren’t much further ahead in terms of quality.

Everything changed with the Internet. First there was file sharing with sites like Napster allowing people to upload and download their favourite music. When the record companies panicked at the thought of losing control over their product, they moved to quickly shut these sites down until it could be figured out how they could get their piece of the pie. Now that the dust has settled on that front, there are a seemingly infinite number of sites out there allowing you to download and stream music or watch videos and concerts. However, like in the bad old days of top 40 radio, the majority of them seem to be fixed on what is popular. If you have somewhat eclectic tastes finding one source to satisfy a craving for music of all genres and from all eras is as difficult as it ever has been.

Thankfully there are some sites out there which take into account that not everybody can be fit into the same round peg. One of the newest to launch specializes in recordings and video of live concerts of all genres of popular music. Concert Vault is the brain child of Bill Sagan, best known as the CEO and founder of the music site Wolfgang’s Vault. As with Wolfgang’s Vault, the bulk of the material on Concert Vault is taken from the archives of arguably the man who was the greatest promoter of popular music in the 20th century, Bill Graham. Sagan managed to purchase the archive and has been making the music and memorabilia available to the public.

At first glance Concert Vault is a little overwhelming. There are literally so many options available to a user it’s difficult to know where to begin. However, Sagan and company given a lot of effort to try and give you a variety of ways to experience the site. There’s no way to make this embarrassment of riches easy to navigate, but if you take a couple of deep breaths and a few moments to get over your excitement, you’ll find they have done the best job possible under the circumstances.

First of all they’ve divided content up into seven distinct channels: rock, blues, jazz, country, folk/bluegrass, indie and interviews. There is also a separate channel for video only, which is itself divided up into the seven channels mentioned above. Of course you can also browse the site by performers through their A-Z index or check out their variety of themed playlists which gathers together selections from the vault.

Of course you always have the option of creating your own playlist or even queuing up a variety of concerts to play one after another in the “Queue” section of the site. While I’m not thrilled with sites that force you to use their own download managers, and with the recent warnings about the threat to Java Script, I hope they will consider changing this. That said, the manager was easy to install and use and I had no problems downloading the concert I wanted (The Talking Heads live at Heatwave 1980 – a brilliant, first introduction of their extended funk line-up).

The first thing you should do is probably purchase a membership. While not necessary to stream product, it does ensure you unlimited access. You can either buy a monthly membership for $2.99 or pay an annual fee of $29.99. For that latter price you are given full access to the entire archive – non-members are limited in what they can view and listen to. Both prices give you unlimited streaming on all web browsers and mobile devices, the most you’ll ever pay to download anything will be $5.00, and you get an annual credit of $24.00 at the Wolfgang’s Vault Store. An extra $20.00 annually buys you a VIP membership. Honestly the only reason you’d want this is if you’re planning on making purchases of memorabilia from the store as it buys you a 10% discount and free domestic ground shipping.

Still the annual fee is a bargain even when you factor in having to maybe pay $5.00 for downloading an entire concert. Consider the fact it will cost you a minimum of something like $9.99 to download an album of music from iTunes and you can see how inexpensive this is. On top of that you’re going to be downloading concerts you’re not going to find anywhere else in the world – literally. Where else can you download the last concert ever given by the Sex Pistols and then flip a page and listen to Bill Monroe or Miles Davis?

What’s even better is this isn’t just a site for Boomers looking to relive their youth by downloading a Grateful Dead concert. Concert Vault also has wide variety of independent bands and you can listen to everybody from The Cowboy Junkies and R.E.M. to The Old 97’s. Or check out some of the newer bands you might not have heard of before like Allah-Las, Alabama Shakes or Winter Sounds.

However, what makes Concert Vault special is the depth and breadth of historical recordings it puts at your disposal. To make a full inventory of what’s available on the site would take weeks, but judging by the couple of skims I’ve made of its content I doubt you’ll find a more complete collection of popular music in all its myriad forms anywhere else on the Internet. While some of the rarer selections might not be as pristine as we’re used to when it comes to audio or video quality, a great many of them pre-date the digital era. Some of them, like a video recording of The Mink DeVille Band from 1978 in San Francisco, make up for their drawbacks in quality simply because of the opportunity they represent to see favoured artists at the height of their abilities when no other records of them exist.

I’m not an aficionado of online music sites, but from what I’ve seen of what’s out there, Concert Vault is definitely one of the best. In terms of organization, ease of use and diversity of content it would be hard for any site to compete. If you love music and want the opportunity to hear your favourite artists in concert without having to leave the comfort of your living room, this site will be a dream come true.