Notes on live music, connection, and the emerging future, by Bootleg founder and CEO Rod Yancy
🎤 Sound Check
For as long as there’s been music, there has been the impulse to keep a piece of it.
Ticket stubs, magazines, setlists folded into pockets, wristbands that stayed on for weeks after the festival. Even the homemade mix CD or the folder of mp3s you swore you’d never delete. We didn’t just consume music, we collected it. We built personal museums of moments.
Bootlegging itself began this way. A stack of tapes traded in back rooms and record shops. The pride of having the rare cut, the legendary set, the show everyone wished they’d been at. It wasn’t just about listening. It was about holding proof that you were there.
Over the years, the objects have changed, and in some ways, they’ve disappeared. Streaming made music infinite, but it also made it intangible.
The collector’s impulse, though, is deeply human and it’s not going anywhere. Even the NFT boom, for all its hype and collapse, proved how ready people are to collect in new ways. The instinct remains while the format evolves.
And, as technology accelerates to warp speed, the memories tied to our peak human experiences only grow more valuable.
This collector’s mentality is woven into the ‘why’ behind Bootleg. We are not just placing a bet on where the pendulum swings next, we’re taking a stand to preserve something worth holding onto.
It’s about capturing a digital time capsule of a moment and packaging it in a way that feels rare and personal.
Keeping Bootlegs in your personal digital collection is simply a new chapter in the same story music fans have been telling for generations.
We are turning nights into artifacts, so the music you love becomes part of the story you keep.
⚡️ Live Wire
The industry’s moving fast. I’m just trying to stay tuned in, and share what I hear along the way.
🗝️ The Power of the Archive
Radiohead’s surprise release of Hail to the Thief–era live recordings wasn’t planned as a nostalgia trip. Thom Yorke said that while preparing for a theatre production, he revisited old performances and was “shocked by the kind of energy” the band had on stage. Those rediscovered tapes, from what he called a “messy and fraught” chapter, became a source of inspiration, so much so that he said it would have been “insane to keep them for ourselves.”
That’s the beauty of live archives: they’re not just mementos for fans, they’re creative fuel for the artists themselves. They hold energy and perspective that even the people who made them can forget until they hear them again. It’s not just about nostalgia, it’s cultural memory and living history.
Yorke’s experience is a reminder that those one-night-only bursts of human connection are irreplaceable, and that the performances artists once picked apart can, with time, reveal themselves as pure magic. No doubt there are millions of fans who would have heard nothing but magic all along.
At Bootleg, we believe these moments shouldn’t require a lucky rediscovery decades later. We’re proud to be building tools for the artists of today to capture the magic of a night in real time, but there’s just as much opportunity working with legacy artists to bring their archives into the light.
👉Read the full story at Pitchfork
🎟️ Backstage Pass
At Bootleg, we help artists capture and sell high-quality audio recordings and photographs from their shows so fans can collect and relive the moment, and artists can keep earning beyond the encore.
What’s Moving
Last week, I shared my dilemma about whether to raise outside capital to power Bootleg’s next phase of growth and the response has been incredible.
It’s been energizing enough that I’ve carved out time over the next couple of weeks to meet with investors, share more about our vision, and see where true alignment might exist. These conversations aren’t just about funding, they’re about finding partners who believe in what we’re building and want to help shape the future of live music.
If you’re an investor reading this and have been considering reaching out, now’s the perfect moment.
🔗 See the Latest Bootlegs
🎵 Fade Out
From ticket stubs to traded tapes, from lost archives to surprise releases, the thread is the same: we keep what matters.
Bootleg exists to make sure those stories don’t get lost in the noise or locked away for decades.
The instinct to collect isn’t going anywhere. And if we do this right, the music you love today and the nights that had a profound impact on you won’t just live in your memory.
They will be part of the living record that outlasts us all.
With gratitude,
Rod Yancy
Founder & CEO, Bootleg.live
www.bootleg.live
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