4.6 Trading

Trading physical media is pretty much obsolete in the current age of broadband
and bittorrent, especially since all audience recordings of the band can now
be shared at the Live Music Archive at:
http://www.archive.org/details/SmashingPumpkins
The below is presented for historical purposes.


The best way to begin in the trading community is to document exactly what you 
have to trade (a list) and to make it available online. Once it is there, 
announce on the newsgroup or other message boards that you are looking to find 
trades, and point them to your list on the web. 

It is generally not a good practice to post your whole list to any discussion 
group. Always point people the another location where they can find it. Another 
easy thing to do is to attach the location of your list at the bottom of every 
email that you send to a discussion group (in your signature). That way someone 
may come across your email and check out your list without you even asking the 
to.


Keeping track of what you have:
-------------------------------
In the trading community, it has become very common that other traders will 
want to know where you got your bootleg from, and what it's original source 
was: this is called "genealogy". While you collect new recordings, it is 
highly recommended that you keep track of as much information about it as 
possible. 

The following is a list of the stuff that is essential:
1) The artist performing
2) The date of the show
3) The venue of the show
4) The length of the show; whether it is incomplete or songs are cut
5) The equipment used to tape the show
6) The source taped from (ie: Soundboard, audience, radio, satellite etc)
7) The sound quality rated using a consistent system (ex: 8.5/10)
8) The copy history of the CD, tape, DAT etc. that you have. (ex: It was 
   originally taped on DAT and then transferred to CDr and then copied 3 more 
   times from that first CDr...)

Other important things to consider:
9) The person that you got the concert from (Also keep track of their email
   in your own records if someone asks for it)
10)Any special notes about your source (ex: skips, neat things during the 
   concert)

There are many lists of experience traders out there that you can take a look 
at to see exactly how you should format your list. I recommend going to the 
newsgroup and asking to look at other people's lists and copying their format.


There is also the Trading FAQ available at SPFC that explains many of the 
nuances of trading. It is available here:
http://www.spfc.org/tradingfaq.txt