Many of you who love Pink Floyd out there in Ebayland may or may not know, but nearly every live performance of Pink Floyd was recorded in some form or fashion...The kicker is, they are all available for FREE!!

Many of these recordings, known as 'Bootlegs' or 'ROIO' (Recordings of Illegitimate/Indeterminate Origin) were pressed to vinyl in the 1960's, 70's and 80's and to CD in the 1990's to present...Many of these recordings, coming from the UK, Europe and Asia, are now very collectible from the standpoint of the 'completist' collector...

As you now know, ALL of these recordings are available for FREE!!  As a result, many Pink Floyd concert recordings now are now also showing up on Ebay merely burned to a CDR with the artwork printed on a household printer...That's right, these unscrupulous and dishonest sellers are downloading a concert, then making CDR copies and selling them to Ebayers who just don't know any different...Not only is it illegal to sell concert recordings of any band without their permission, it is also against Ebay's rules and is frowned upon in the Pink Floyd Community of Traders of this material, who all distribute this for FREE!! 

Many underhanded Ebay Sellers are making the claim that their recording is on 'silver discs' or that it is an 'original'...Claims that can't be proven because there is no 'original', unless it came direct from the person who recorded the concert, which is rare indeed... There is no way to tell the lineage of the recording by reading the item description, which many are vague, which I believe is intentional to take advantage of the under-educated Buyer...The Seller maybe has one photograph and it is blurry at best...There is  also no way to really tell the quality of what you are buying until you have the item in your eager hot little hands...

If your particular Pink Floyd Concert recording was actually pressed to CD, this means someone had to have made a 'Glass Master', which is a physical die to make CDs from...This master must be made from the original source recording, which could have been reel to reel, cassette or even minidisc...Then had to know someone or sneak this into a CD production facility, of which there are very few in the world, then have their recording stamped to blank media in a limited capacity...The CD itself will have the label information, usually screen printed directly onto the surface of the disc, but now there exists rather inexpensive printers just for printing on CDR media that do a great job of fooling you, so what to do now?

You can learn to use a recent technology called the Bit Torrent...Bit Torrent is a file sharing system that is being successfully used to download and upload high quality audio and video recordings of Pink Floyd's concerts, (as well as many other bands) in chiefly two lossless, yet compressed file formats known as .shn (shorten) and .flac...Most concerts are under a gigabyte in size to download and when decompressed, create .wav files that you can then burn onto your own CDRs...Now you can enjoy your Pink Floyd in your car, at work or on your stereo at home!!  Most downloads come with complete artwork and liner notes and also come with what are called 'checksum' files, that insure the integrity of the download and to help prevent any problems with decompression...

So the moral of this guide is--Save Your Money, since many of these recordings go for well over $50.00...Go NOW & look on google for 'BitTorrent', which is a FREE program you need to download and upload (share) the compressed files with...then you will also need the file decompression software...The two I use are also FREE downloads... These are called MKW Audio Compression Tool and Flac Frontend...All three softwares are relatively easy and straightforward programs to use, even for those who have just a little bit of computer know how and can follow instructions...

Once you have the basic software, then you can look for websites like Neptune Pink Floyd, Yeeshkul and Echoes Hub just to name a few...Concerts are being offered daily, and your limited only to your hard drive space...When you finish downloading a concert, you are obligated to upload the entire file set back up to other users, which they also do in turn...This cycle is called Leeching and Seeding...you are a Leecher while you are downloading the concert and a Seeder when you are sharing it back with other users...

But if your pockets are lined with money or you can't be bothered with learning how to use Bit Torrent Technology, then don't let me stop you from throwing your cash away on a recording, that with a minimal amount of effort and a little bit of patience, you can download for FREE and in the best sound quality available for the particualar show you are interested in...