 What is a bootleg? |
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A bootleg recording, in the case of U2, is a recording that has not been officially released by U2.
They usually take the format of a "live recording" of a U2 performance. Some prefer to call those recordings
that are sold "bootlegs" and do not use that term for recordings that have been made of live material which
are traded but not sold. In some countries bootlegs of concerts are legally available for sale. These are often refered to
as "live imports." If you decide to buy bootlegs, you must consider that the artists get no royalties for the sales.
(source: U2faqs.com)
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| How does U2 feel about bootlegs? |
In 1991, when a bootleg of U2's studio sessions called The New U2 (the first version of what would eventually become the Salomé bootleg)
was being distributed, Island Records took out a full-page ad in the British publication Music Week warning record stores that the
label would "take legal proceedings" against anyone selling the bootlegs. U2 manager Paul McGuinness issued a press statement
saying the bootleggers were cheating fans by distributing inferior material.
In a later interview about the incident, Bono said: "The only thing that can piss you off is if people are charging a lot
of money for something that isn't very good. It [the Achtung Baby working tapes] got bootlegged in Berlin and it was just
like having your notebook read out. That's the bit I didn't like about it. There were no undiscovered works of genius,
unfortunately, it was more just gobbledy-gook."
During 2001, several other comments were made by the band regarding the recording of their shows. They made it clear
that they were fine with people recording their performances and trading them. They did make it clear that they were
opposed to people making money from those recordings. As Bono says, "We invite people to bootleg our shows. We invite
people to make copies, we've no problems with that, but if some guy is gonna make money off the back of this,
we're gonna find out where he parks his car." Even with those comments being made, those recording cannot
openly do so at a show, as security does still take steps to prevent that.(source: U2faqs.com)
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| How do I download a bootleg? |
First, be sure you have an U2start.com account, that's absolutely free and you can create a new one in 30 seconds.
You can create an account with the link on our front page. After you've registered and logged in (also on the front page)
you go (back) to the show page from the bootleg you want to download. Then you select the AUDIO tab and choose the source
of your choice. Then you click on "Download this bootleg" (in most cases the bootleg is split to multiple files, then you click first "Download part I" and then "Download part II" etc.)
You'll be taken to an upload service website which hosts the bootleg for us, in most cases Rapidshare.com or Mediafire.com. If you
have any problems downloading the file from one of those two sites, please go to their FAQ or support because we cannot
help you with that. If the bootleg isn't available anymore on the download site, please report that in our forums so
that we can take care of that. Our automated system will take care of broken links as well.
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| I see multiple sources for a show, which one should I download? |
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Generally you can just pick the first source, because we order them on sound quality. Other sources are often just downloaded by collectors or
people who prefer an good audience recording rather than a good soundboard recording. Sometimes sources are equal in quality,
then it's just for you to decide which one is better. Most of the times it's that personal that we can't make the decision for you.
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| While extracting my files I get asked for a password, how can I fix this? |
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We don't offer password-protected files, so you probably use the wrong extraction tool. Make sure you use WinRAR for Windows and Stuffit for Mac. Just use Google to find free downloads.
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| How can I download these bootlegs with a Mac/with Apple? |
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With Windows you can use WinRAR to extract the files, for Mac it is called Stuffit (from stuffit.com).
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| I get an error stating a file is corrupt or incomplete, how to fix? |
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First you have to make sure that you have downloaded all files for a recording, and that they're downloaded in the same folder. Then you need to be
sure that you extract them with WinRAR (or Stuffit for Mac) and you just extracted the first part. You don't need to touch the other parts. Still getting an error?
If the bootleg/source is available on multiple download services you can try to redownload the files from another service. Often the files apart from the last one
need to be 100 MB in filesize, so if any file is below you can try redownloading that one because your internet connection might be interrupted before with the
first download. Just keep trying, if the error keeps popping up our broken links topic in the place to be. Please be as specific as possible with your problem.
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| Which download service should I use? |
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That is often quite personal, we at U2start have great experiences with Rapidshare due to it's reliable and fast services.
Rapidshare however has for non-paying users a download limit, which Mediafire doesn't have. Megaupload has it, but not as
restrictive as Rapidshare. Just try some and see what works best for you in terms of reliability and speed. The only important
thing is to download one source from one service, you usually can't download part I from service A and part II from service B.
Sometimes you can though.
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| Where can I upload bootlegs? |
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You can use any free and reliable download service, we recommend Rapidshare.com,
Mediafire.com and if both really don't work you can also use
Megaupload.com.
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| Where can I find the latest upgrades? |
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You can find a list of the latest upgrades on the AUDIO tab of the show pages.
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| How is the show of the month chosen? |
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Generally the crew decides this, often we will also involve other members in the forums or with a poll (You Too at the frontpage).
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| Do I have to pay for the bootlegs? |
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No, and you'll never have to, our bootleg collection is absolutely free available for anyone in the world.
You don't have to upload or do anything in order to use our bootleg collection. That's what U2 fans are all
about in our opinion. But, when you download bootlegs you often have to deal with upload/download services
that have certain limits on downloading files, for example: on Rapidshare you can download a file,
but you'll have to wait about 90 seconds. And when you want to download another file, you'll have to
wait for another couple of hours after your first download. That's annoying sometimes, especially as
you want to download lots of bootlegs on one day. You can decide to become a premium member of Rapidshare
or Megaupload or any other site to solve that problem, then you'll pay for the bandwidth you use with
downloading all these files. You pay that to their service and absolutely not to U2start, and you
don't pay money for the bootlegs but only for the bandwidth you use. But you don't have to pay
anything in order to download, but sometimes you'll have to wait a bit to get what you want.
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| How do I know which bootlegs I already have and which not? |
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You can go to "your u2start" at the top of our website, then you'll click on "my bootleg collection"
and you can fill in all the bootlegs you already have. When a new bootlegs shows up, it will be marked with an orange
dot instead of a red one, which means you don't have it. After downloading you click on the bootleg page on the
link "Add this bootleg to my U2start profile" and the bootleg will be marked red. You can also browse the
"what we have and you don't" page (mentioned under "bootlegs") to see all the bootlegs you're currently missing.
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| Can you specify the rating stars of bootlegs? |
Thanks to member ReclinerMan who compiled this list we can, here you go:
5 stars:
Near-Perfect Proper Recording; could be released as a proper live album (it may have already).
4.5 stars:
Good Proper Recording; recording sounds great, but doesn't properly represent event i.e. improper mix/incomplete soundboard (poor audience to band ratio/one sided to a certain performer).
4 stars:
Excellent Audience Recording; top-tier recording of the show from the crowd with all elements clear and audible, as it should be.
3.5 stars:
Great Audience Recording; quality recording of the show from the crowd but minor problems start occurring (screaming or talking/shifts in quality/age or poor handling).
3 stars:
Good Audience Recording; fine recording of the show but the minor problems begin occurring more frequently.
2.5 stars:
Average Audience Recording; the performance is there but major problems begin popping up (too much screaming or talking/unwieldy shifts in quality/source damage beyond repair).
2 stars:
Fair Audience Recording; no performance just problems with the source.
1.5 stars:
Poor Audience Recording; you were standing outside the performance area, weren't you?
1 star:
Abysmal Audience Recording; mind as well be two hours of you babbling your finger against your lips.
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| I downloaded a bootleg, but I get a .RAR/.ZIP file, how do I open it and what is it?! |
All the bootlegs (or at least the majority) are packed in zipped files with WinZIP or WinRAR to make the filesize smaller.
You can unzip this package with WinRAR, a freeware tool which you can download for free at www.rarlabs.com (for Mac this is
named Stuffit.
Then you'll open this downloaded file and click on "Extract" in WinRAR and you can specify where you want to have all the files of your bootleg.
So all the MP3's (or WMA's etc) are packed in one file called a RAR/ZIP file which you can extract to your PC after downloading.
Note: you should have all the files before you extract them, and you should only extract the first part!
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| Can I download a specific file or do I need to download the whole bootleg? |
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You cannot download a specific file, you'll have to download the whole bootleg in order to get to the file(s) you want to have.
That's unless the upload/download service Savefile is used, only then you'll be able to download particular tracks at once.
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| What is a soundboard recording? |
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These are "live" concerts recorded with professional equipment. During a concert the signal from the instruments usually channels
through the central mixing station, or soundboard, before going to the PA system. A soundboard recording is a recording that
takes place at the soundboard. These recordings are high quality.
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| What is an ALD (Assisted Listening Device) recording? |
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Bootleggers can request an ALD (Assisted Listening Device) headset at an arena concert (required by law for hearing impaired fans),
which provides a high-quality feed of a live show using a low-level FM frequency broadcast inside a facility.
Bootleggers will tape this headset feed, giving the bootleg not usual problems like random crowd noise or distortion.
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| Wat is an IEM (In Ear Monitors) recording? |
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In Ear Monitors are devices used by performers to hear a mix of microphones and/or instrument pickups that are on the stage.
They are often custom fitted to the individuals ears and provide a high level of noise reduction from stage noise. An IEM
recording is a recording of this wireless audio feed, there can be a difference between an IEM recording from Bono's feed
and the recording from Adam's for instance.
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| Wat is a matrix recording? |
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A matrix recording is a new recording consisting of different tapes from the same show. An example can be that you have an audience and IEM recording (both have their own (dis)advantages) and you want to
mix them in one recording, that would be a matrix.
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| Wat is usenet and how can I download from it? |
Well, usenet is a great way of sharing stuff like DVD's or other multimedia. The big difference with torrents and other Peer2Peer networks and advantage of usenet is that everyone can download all that's posted at maximum internet speed, you download it from central servers, not from other users.
For example, I (Remy) can download over 10.000 DVD's at the moment with 2,5 MB per second (my max. speed) if I would want to. I use usenet for over 3 years and I don't want anything else. I pay a small amount per month for my payserver which gives me 120 days retention and unlimited downloads and speed.
If you want to know more about usenet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
If you want to download from it and want to know more about how you can get all this uploaded stuff:
http://www.binaries4all.com/
If you want to add something to U2start, make sure you add the following information to your post:
- The post date (very important regarding retention).
- The related usenet group (ie alt.binaries.boneless).
- The filename (ie u2 - zootv live).
- A detailed description or a copy of the attached info file.
- And if you can find one or have one, a link to the NZB file.
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