Bootleg Arrives as a New Way to Experience Live Music
Bootleg, a new company from Oath Music, is finally making distribution of high quality, fully licensed concert recordings available to the benefit of artists, fans, labels, and venues.
Bootleg captures high-fidelity audio of concerts, mixes and masters, and allows fans to purchase and download them within the Bootleg app.
Like a concert poster or band t-shirt, Bootleg recordings are available for purchase during the show through QR codes and at the merch table.
Once purchased, fans replay and relive their concert experiences for years to come, knowing that their support directly benefits the artists.
While streaming has made music more accessible than ever, it has also driven down artist earnings.
Meanwhile, live concerts remain the ultimate fan experience, but once the night is over, the music fades into memory.
In an age where 1% of artists are collecting 99% of earnings from streaming, Bootleg unlocks a brand new revenue stream for artists at all career stages, while offering fans a new way to reminisce and savor their favorite sets.
Bootleg sprang from an amazing concert that ended with a disappointing trip to the merch table for founder and CEO Rod Yancy, already a successful serial entrepreneur with a copyright law background:
“I took my two sons to their first concert, Beck and Phoenix. We had a great time and my sons even got to high five Thomas Mars, the lead singer of Phoenix, as he ran down the aisle. On the way out, we stopped by the merch table for a token to remember our shared experience, but I struck out,” explains Yancy. “They didn’t have shirts in kid’s sizes. They weren’t selling CDs or tapes and we didn’t have a working record player at the time. Disappointed, I went ahead and bought the vinyl, but what I really wanted was a convenient way to listen to a recording of the show we had just heard and the experience sparked the idea for Bootleg.”
Yancy let this idea simmer for a few months while he focused on his other business Oath, a financial and estate planning company founded upon the philosophy that life is short and should be lived with intention. After graduating from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, Yancy did a short stint at RIAA, combatting copyright infringement.
A self-taught programmer, he soon moved from entertainment law to start-up accelerators, diving into iOS and app development early and launching one of the first daily fantasy sports websites, Paper Sports.
Most recently, Yancy launched Oath Music, a company dedicated to supporting musicians by developing innovative products to help them thrive and promoting their concerts and festivals.
Bootleg is the company’s flagship product.
Combining his experience in copyright law, his passion for music, startup background, and experience scaling businesses, Yancy’s journey to founding Bootleg was serendipitous. “Everybody has that first concert or memorable show that they wish they could listen to again. Bootleg is here to solve that problem and give fans a lasting point of connection to that performance and those artists,” says Yancy.
Bootleg is currently promoting select concerts in the United States.
“It’s truly exciting to build something that enhances the fan experience and helps artists at the same time,” says Yancy. “You can’t exactly bottle up the magic of seeing your favorite artist perform live at a sold out show, but our intention is to help people savor and cherish those memories for years to come.”
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