Live Music Archive, a part of Internet Archive, now offers more than 250,000 recordings for, as the Archive notes, fans wanting to relive an epic concert or discover upcoming bands.
The collection has steadily grown over the past 20 years as a collaborative effort between Internet Archive staff and dedicated, music-loving volunteers. At a pace of uploading nearly 30 items a day, the Live Music Archive reached the one-quarter million recording mark in June 2023 and now takes up more than 250 terabytes of data on Internet Archive servers.
“It’s a huge victory for the open web,” said founder of the Internet Archive Brewster Kahle, about the Live Music Archive, which he describes as “fantastically popular” with the public. “Fans have helped build it. Bands have supported it. And the Internet Archive has continued to scale it to be able to meet the demand.”
As the Archive’s blog adds since its launch two decades ago, more than 8,000 artists have given permission to have recordings of their shows archived on the Live Music Archive, and users from around the world have listened to files more than 600 million times. The collection includes the iconic Grateful Dead, as well as aspiring musicians trying to garner attention from the free outlet that spans jam bands, folk singers, bluegrass, rock, pop, jazz, classical and experimental music.
