Welcome - About Live and Loud!

Live and Loud! began as a fortnightly internet radio show in 2012 taking old unreleased live concert recordings I could find and working to repair and improve them - fixing tape hiss, noise, tape drop out, clicks, speed variations, defects - before improving the sound quality by EQing the sound to bring out the instruments as clearly as possible. These are now made directly available to download for free to reach as many fans of the music as possible.

Depending on the quality of the original recording, these can often be made to sound almost like commercial recordings - but of course I can't guarantee that for every show. What I can guarantee is it will sound far better than the original files available which have been floating around the internet and on bootleg recordings for many years.

Almost all are either "soundboard" recordings (taken directly from the mixing desk used at the gig on the night) or old FM radio recordings. A few gigs, if they are of special historical importance, make an appearance even if they were recorded from the audience - these can also be made to sound better than ever.

Do your ears a favour and listen on headphones or good speakers to get most benefit - laptop speakers will always sound pretty poor by comparison.

All shows still available are listed, including a link to download the remastered show for free. If you want to support the site with a small donation, you can receive the shows as either separate MP3s or FLACs (your choice) - head over to the Rewards for Donations page and see how you can get a lot for very little!

If you want to email me, an email link is in my profile in a link in the side panel.

And finally... These are great fun to listen to but DO NOT replace original releases - support these artists and buy their music. There is nothing you can go and buy in a regular record store here. If a gig is made available as a regular release, then it will be removed (as a couple have been already).

Monday, 27 May 2019

Site Update

As some of you will know, since being unable to work for the last couple of years, I have relied on site donations to keep this going, and to maintain the cloud space that allows the links to stay up, permanently (unlike most other sites of this type where links can die or be crazily slow). While the site has attracted thousands of downloads of the free files, donations aren't very common; in fact if it wasn't for a few regular donations from a couple of individuals, this site might have already been affected.

I remain grateful to everyone who has donated to the site - some who haven't even wanted any files in return - you have all helped enormously! But I know this isn't guaranteed.

I have also had some other sites taking these shows and reposting them - I have no problem with that if they give credit for what I've done - but in some cases they've actually done the opposite and removed anything linking it to me. And then made them available from THEIR sites via ad links. So they're making money from my work and have done nothing apart from grab it from here for free. They're making me out to be a mug, frankly.

So for all these reasons, the free show downloads will soon all link to a 5 second ad before giving you download link. This won't be paying for a holiday, or even a swanky meal for 2 (nowhere near! :-) ) but over a 12 month period should at least go towards the cost of the of the cloud storage and hopefully guarantee - with the odd donation that comes in - that all site costs can be covered each year.

If this works as it all should do, I will also be reducing the cost of donating to receive separated MP3s for anyone who does want those.

Live and Loud! has managed to remain completely ad free for 5 years - which was always my intention. As someone said recently, that's a rarity nowadays! But the reality is, I was working then and now I'm not, and that has needed to change for a while so the site pays for itself.

I'm aware that to most downloading from here, they are used to ad links anyway, so it won't be a big deal for them - but this info is particularly for those of you who don't generally visit other sites offering live shows.

Instructions
Shows affected will have it noted in the description where the link is. Click on the free download link on my pages as normal. You will be sent to another webpage where there might be a pop up labeled "Festy"or "Shorte",  asking you to select yes to proceed - this is safe to click on. If you see any other popups, ignore or close them. At this point you should be seeing an advert of some kind. After 5 seconds you will see a "skip this ad" button on the top right - click on that and the download option for the show will appear as usual. Due to the freeloaders on other sites mentioned above, if you have a popup blocker installed, you will not be able to download the shows. I'm sorry I have to do this - but please disable your adblocker for the screen that appears with the ad. You may need to go back and click on the link a 2nd time once you've done this.

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2 comments:

  1. Anonymous19 September 2019 at 07:22

    You have essentially destroyed your site with these ads. I'm happy to view ads as a way to support your site, but the ads just keep coming, they try to add programs and notifications to my computer and there is no "redirect" to the download. Plus, a few ads have triggered a virus warning. No bueno.

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    1. Flip Martian21 September 2019 at 02:09

      As explained here https://www.liveandloudshows.com/p/blog-page_17.html, the virus warnings are bogus. Some virus checkers do throw up bogus warnings. As I explain - just don't click on the ads, only click on the download link. Even trying a different browser can work better.

      People are still downloading from the site - numbers are pretty much as before, so I haven't "destroyed the site" but I'm sorry you're having problems with the links. I would much rather not have them but I can't afford to keep the site going indefinitely for free.

      Every show now is available as separate MP3s for half the price of a cup of coffee - no ads or anything else. That half a cup of coffee would keep the site going as long as I have shows to do if more were happy to donate that but less than a 1/10th of a percent of visitors to the site do donate (and those who have really have kept the site going over the last 3 years). Hence the ads (which many other "live show" blogs have had in operation for longer than me).

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