OpenLIVE Tests U.S. Waters

OpenLIVE, the Australian platform that enables artists to record their live gigs, has made its first appearance on the United States market after soft-launching in Australia and Britain with 12 venues in August. 

The U.S. debut took place at the pop-up venue Rock n’ Shop @ The Paper Box in Brooklyn, New York, which opens on weekends.

The Paper Box, one of the music venues at the Bushwick Hotel, hosts up to seven free all-ages matinee shows alongside an arts and food festival.

“We’re looking forward to this being a springboard into other venues in NYC as we manufacture more MasterBuilder units,” CEO Dale Moore told Pollstar. The MasterBuilder allows acts to record, mix and master their shows at venues and festivals. OpenLIVE now has 2.5 million hi-res audio tracks for download. The acts maintain full copyright and can decide when and if they wants to make the recordings public. They get the 24-bit/48kHz recordings in large single waveform, after which they add artwork, track listings and credits, and edit out any unwanted tracks.

“At the moment, this can take up to 72 hours to get through our distribution chain and onto our store,” Moore said. “In time we want the recordings to be available an hour after the show.”

A high-profile user is singer-songwriter and guitarist Dan Sultan, whose U.S.-recorded Blackbird album peaked at No. 4 on the official ARIA chart and went gold.

Photo: DanSultan.com

Currently on an Australian tour, Sultan recorded a sellout show at Melbourne’s National Theatre for sale during the dates. OpenLIVE will record more stops during the tour before it ends Dec. 12.