This month we feature nyctaper.org. Here is a bit on the site’s development and upcoming plans…
nyctaper.com began as an experiment that sought to pull together all the positive
aspects of taping culture.
While the torrent trackers gave collectors of unofficial live recordings the ideal
speed and access that collectors have always sought, but lacked a real focus
on the bands and community.
The blogs provided information, commentary, and some community aspects, but
lacked any original musical content. The idea behind nyctaper was that the live
recordings would give the artists greater exposure as the site provided a review of
the concert, links to the official releases, tour information, and ultimately access
to instant downloads of concerts.
We use several different high-end taping rigs to record the concerts, including
Neumann and DPA microphones, Apogee and Edirol pre-amps, and M-Audio
and Marantz digital recorders.
nyctaper has gone through its share of growing pains in its first year, primarily as
a result of the bandwidth issues, some self-created problems of artist permission,
and a certain level of distrust on the web of the mission of the site.
At this point, I feel the site has worked out most of the kinks. We record anywhere
from one to five concerts a week, and make every effort to research the bands so that
our reviews are both informative and focused. We only record bands who give us
advanced permission or who have historically expressed a taper-friendly position.
The number of concert recordings available on the site is approaching one hundred,
and all are still available for download on our server. Readers email the request for
access and are provided with a download location.
As nyctaper’s reputation for quality has grown, we now receive direct requests from
bands to record their concerts, links from bands’ sites of our reviews and recordings,
and recently offers from venues to come and record.
In the first two and half months of 2008, we have offered reviews and recordings of
the following bands on nyctaper: moe., Kimya Dawson, Marco Benevento, Fiery
Furnaces, Mission of Burma, Avey Tare/Deakin/Kria Brekkan (Animal Collective),
Rings, The Antlers, They Might Be Giants, Calvin Johnson, The National, Bon Iver,
Black Mountain, Bjorkestra, Oakley Hall, Oneida, and Pierce Turner.
Some of the recordings from 2007 that continue to be consistently popular download
requests include Wilco, The White Stripes, Gov’t Mule, Animal Collective, Yo La
Tengo, and Meat Puppets.
nyctaper will be as busy as ever in the coming months. Our schedule for April includes
approximately 15 live dates. As we approach the first anniversary of the site, nyctaper
will also be presenting a concert to celebrate the year. The concert is scheduled for
May 11, 2008, with more details to follow.