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?
Article comments
1 - Bob
Two points that I would add to the review. 1) An additional medium where you could see and hear your favorite music was in film. From A Hard Day's Night to Woodstock, from TAMI Show to Wattstax, rocumentaries helped fill a big gap. 2) I believe that Concert Vault, unlike a lot of download sites, pays some kind of royalty to the artists. One additional point, over the past year, members have had access to free weekly downloads (and during the holidays they had 12 days straight of free downloads for members. A great source for music fans!