I just came across this (legal) torrent of a well recorded and rather fine late afternoon performance by Youssou N’Dour with his full band at the North Sea Jazz festival last month.
The same performance can be seen on YouTube, and the audio is already on Spotify, but if you want lossless FLACs, here they are.
https://archive.org/details/YoussouNDour2026-07-12
Fill your bitboots.
You may well have more information, but a note of caution that it being on the Internet Archive is no real indication of it being legal. The IA is pretty much Napster dressed up in library clothing.
“Recorded 120 feet from stage dead center. Soundboard rail
Schoeps MK41 Riotbox Zoom F-3 32 bit 48k”
In other words, a “Recording Of Independent Origin” aka Audience Bootleg.
Thanks Foxy
None of the above observations mean necessarily that it is an unauthorized recording.
I disagree that the Internet Archive “is pretty much Napster dressed up in library clothing”. Napster used to serve up anything and everything, including officially-released material. With zero quality control.
There are a coterie of artists who don’t mind audience recordings being made, as long as they are not from gigs that they intend to release recordings of.
And that the audience recordings are not being sold for profit.
Quite a lot of artists just don’t really care, as long as the taper isn’t doing it for money.
Thumbs up @Mike_H
Some things I was thinking about just now.
Does someone recording a gig from the audience and then making the recording available gratis affect an artist’s income? In almost all cases I think not.
Can audience recording piss off artists and other people in the audience? Yes, if it’s not done with some respect.
If the artist’s or the venue’s stated attitude is that they disapprove, then you shouldn’t do it.