What happened to instant live shows?

I went to my first concert in 2002. And outside the show, they had an official booth where if you sign up and pay in advance, they'll send you a CD of the actual fricking concert you're about to see! You could also go online and buy any show from the tour. In fact, you can *still* go online and buy those shows. I thought I was living in 3030 AD.

I thought this was the future of concerts, I thought this was going to catch on. Eleven years later, it hasn't. And I couldn't be more pissed. And I don't understand why not.

Here's the fuckin' kicker, alright? It's simple as pie to record a live show, all you do is tap into the soundboard. The content is already being mixed, the sound is reasonably clear, this is how good bootlegs are made. In fact, recording live shows is so easy that most artists already record most of their shows, if not all of them. They record hundreds of shows in the off-hand chance that someday any given show will be useful in composing a live album or box set, etc.

So they already have these shows recorded. God forbid they sell them to fans for an exorbitant profit. The really stunning thing is... this isn't 2002 anymore. They don't have to spend 30 cents on blank CDs and print the damn things themselves anymore. They can charge fans $35 for a digital download that costs exactly nothing to make. They're already recording the shows, and they would cost zero dollars to sell... that's pure profit. And fans would pay! Either for the novelty of having the shows they personally attended, or for completists who want a thorough record of the tour, or for gigs that contain special performances such as exclusive duets or rare deep cuts.

But for whatever reasons, nobody bothers to do this.

I would gladly slam my face into a brick wall repeatedly for these performances to be available. I would do anything. Because I would swoon for years straight if I could have all five of my Tom Petty shows and compile a personal best of Tom Petty featuring performances I actually saw in the flesh. That's $175 that I am begging to give to Tom Petty, and I'm only one fan. I also would pay top dollar times ten to have my different Neil Young shows and be able to reevaluate them in today's light, as I was a novice Neil fan when I started seeing him.

But the real kicker is Taylor Swift. You know how dedicated her fans are. You know that out of the ballpark 3 million or so people who are going to see Taylor on this tour, you could recoup whatever negligible labor costs it would require to post 70 shows on iTunes a billion times over.

And on this tour she's doing something very, very special. On the last tour most gigs got a wild card song that was a cover by an artist from whatever region she was playing in at the time. That's cool and all but... covers, meh, that doesn't really interest me as I'm more into Taylor's originals than anything she'd be covering.

But this tour she's doing every fan's dream, and playing ubercool deep cuts. Shit she's never even played before. AND she's doing it solo-acoustiC!!! As an old school folk music fan from way back this blows my fucking mind more than a thousand hydrogen bombs. And I am clawing my eyes at over the prospect that I may never get to hear even five or six of these amazing songs. This is the kind of problem that for god's sake I wish I could throw money at. I would gladly pay so, so much just to have these songs in decent audio quality.

If we're lucky enough to get a Red Tour official album, it will most likely contain one or even a few of Taylor's wild card solo acoustic songs. But even a best case scenario, 3 out of the 20 or 30 different songs isn't remotely good enough. They'll probably pick some of the big hits instead of the jaw-dropping rarities and all the best stuff from this tour will fade away into obscurity, never to be heard.

For the life of me I don't know where to find Taylor Swift bootlegs. No sources have yeilded results. I know audio recordings are blase' in the era of shitty cellphone recordings posted to youtube, but there are literally tens of thousands of people at a Taylor Swift gig. All it would take is one bloke who's old school, one music geek who's my age, and in the internet age that's all it should take for the show to be readily available.

Alas, I'm at my wits end. If anyone might know where I could find audio recordings of Taylor's shows, I would be eternally grateful.