A Good Souvenir? MP3 Keychains Hit Maxwell's

By shane

Ever been to a great show and wanted to take the gig home in a doggie bag afterwards? Soon, you might just be able to. eMusic is in the process of launching eMusic Live, a service that will allow you to keep hold of your favorite gigs beyond the concert hall. Here's how it works. For $20, you purchase a keychain that contains a small hard drive capable of holding two hours worth of music. As you watch your favorite band play live, a feed goes directly from the soundboard to a machine that encodes the audio into mp3 format. At the end of the gig, you go to a machine in the venue, stick in your keychain and $10, and presto, you've got a legal soundboard-quality recording of the show that you can take home and upload via USB to your computer. Whether both fans and artists will embrace the idea is still up in the air (but we think it's kinda neat.) The first club to have access to eMusic Live will be Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ (who often play host to a variety of stellar bands,) and more are to follow.