Skip to main content

YouTube gets Mother lode of legendary rock concert footage

thousands of rare videos legendary rock bands are now on youtube rollingstones jagger
Google’s YouTube just nabbed a Mother lode of concert footage after striking an agreement with Music Vault. The world’s most popular video service sees the addition of more than 12,000 new clips to Music Vault’s own channel, which the concert footage archive created back in April with an initial 1,600 videos. Combined with the channel’s existing video, the new footage – which features a vast variety of artists and live performances – brings the YouTube channel’s total amount of exclusive content to more than 2,000 hours, according to a report from The Verge.

The famed bands and performers showcased in the collection include rock and pop acts such as The Who, The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, The Band, and Peter Frampton. But the catalogue also has performances from ’90s-era acts and even newer artists such as The Black Angels, The Dodos, Deer Tick, and The Mountain Goats, courtesy of film holdings from modern sites such as Paste Magazine and Daytrotter.

Recommended Videos

Music Vault’s YouTube channel has a handful of sub-channels for some of the bigger bands and songwriters that comprise a large proportion of the content: The Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers, Neil Young, Santana, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and Van Morrison, as well as individual genre channels for Blues and Jazz. But if you want to really delve into the resource’s material and break it all down by artist, head over to Music Vault’s official website. The official site has a “Browse” tab for categories such as “Best Live Performances,” “Most Viewed,” and “Featured Releases,” but the “Performers” tab is where you can really go nuts. The section has hundreds of artists broken down from A to Z, and includes some real gems ripe for the picking, from a cluster of “Best of Newport Jazz Festival” compilations for each year from 1985 to 2008, to 1985’s “Bill Graham Presents 20th Anniversary Concert.”

This incredibly versatile source for art from both a bygone era and our own modern musical epoch is owned and managed by Wolfgang’s Vault, which acquired a large proportion of its catalogue in 2003 from the archives of Bill Graham Presents. The acquisition included rare and previously unreleased recordings from legendary venues like the Fillmore East and Winterland. Wolfgang’s Vault maintains its video content within its subsidiary service, Concert Vault.

Alex Tretbar
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Alex Tretbar, audio/video intern, is a writer, editor, musician, gamer and sci-fi nerd raised on EverQuest and Magic: The…
What is spatial audio? Apple’s 3D sound feature fully explained
Person listening to spatial audio using Apple AirPods Max headphones.

At WWDC 2021 (Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference), Apple officially added support for spatial audio with Dolby Atmos Music for Apple Music. It quickly became a popular format among consumers, too: Apple estimates that by February 2022, playback of spatial audio tracks had quadrupled from just a few months prior as people experimented with the format. But what exactly is spatial audio? How is it different from (or the same as) Dolby Atmos? And what kind of audio equipment do you need to listen to it?

There's a lot of ground to cover, and some of it is a bit technical, but we're going to break it all down in easy-to-understand terms. You'll be a spatial audio expert in minutes, and you'll know exactly how to access this growing trend in movie and music streaming.
What exactly is spatial audio?

Read more
The best podcasts of 2022
best podcasts

Whether you've already stored all your favorite podcasts in your app of choice, ready for listening, or are new to the world of podcasts, there's no denying their popularity. Podcasts are everywhere these days and have become some of the most beloved entertainment and education mediums worldwide. Whatever you're into, from tech and video game chat to world news and politics or true crime, there are plenty of specialized interest shows to choose from.

With so many podcasts available, there’s no way that you can listen to all of them. To help you out, no matter your interests, we've gathered a variety of shows to turn you on to your next great listen.

Read more
How to convert your vinyl to a digital format
Rebirth of cool: Is vinyl ready for a second wind, or just a fad?

It doesn't matter one bit if your vinyl collection consists of just a single milk crate or if it fills several Ikea Kallax shelves and is slowly taking over your home — we can all agree that there's just something about vinyl.

Maybe it's the warm, uncompressed sound spinning off a solid turntable, or the feel of holding a physical piece of art in your hands while the record spins — it's a special experience that has regained much of its glory in a world dominated by digital streaming. The problem is, records are fragile, and crates full of them don't fit in your back pocket.

Read more