masloriy

The math on this collection should mass-humble every streaming service on the planet. One guy. A Sony cassette recorder. 10,000 concerts over 40 years. 30,000 individual sets from 3,000+ artists. R.E.M., The Cure, Nirvana, Björk, Depeche Mode, Sonic Youth, Phish, Tracy Chapman, Boogie Down Productions. His first recording of Nirvana was July 8, 1989 at a tiny club called Dreamerz. Kurt Cobain was 20 years old. The band introduced themselves by saying they were from Seattle. This was two full years before Nevermind existed. That tape is now cleaned up and streaming for free. The digitization operation alone is wild. One volunteer drives to Jacobs' house monthly, picks up 10-20 boxes of 50-100 tapes each, runs them through 10 simultaneous cassette decks he repaired himself. 5,500 tapes digitized since late 2024. Dozens more volunteers across the US and Europe do mastering, metadata, and setlist verification. Sometimes they contact the actual artists to confirm what songs were played. The collection went from 171 recordings in January 2025 to over 2,300 by April 2026. At this rate it'll take years to upload everything. Spotify has 100 million tracks. Apple Music has 100 million. Neither has a recording of Nirvana's first Chicago show. A guy with a tape recorder in his pocket does.