Professionally recorded and mastered live material to be delivered directly to your phone.

If you’ve been to a live show in the last few years you’ll be familiar with the problem, the humble cellphone has now replaced the lighter as the ‘in the air’ device of choice. It’s not simply used as illumination however, anyone who’s browsed these pages looking for advance listens of Kanye West (and plenty of others) will be used to hearing the crunchy distorted sound that results from a very loud source being recorded on a device that simply isn’t geared up for that kind of use. Sidelining the fact that the practice is illegal (imagine if two-thirds of the audience had been holding up tape recorders back in the 80s? You had to be discreet back then) and annoying for fans just trying to enjoy the show, it’s not the best look for the bands being recorded who would rather people were listening to their tracks at their properly-mastered best.

This is where Soundhalo comes in, and the app was debuted this week at an Alt-J performance at London’s Brixton Academy. The Android-only beta version is now downloadable from the Soundhalo site, and promises to allow users to “watch, download and share artist endorsed live music as it happens.”. Now that might sound a little vague, but the idea is that a production crew at the venue itself will combine soundboard recorded and quickly mastered audio with video footage shot at the venue and upload an MP4 file to the cloud immediately after the song has finished. Soundhalo users will then be able to purchase the tracks to listen to straight away.

It sounds a little like alchemy to us, but according to Alt-J it really worked with drummer Thom Green saying: “I think it’s amazing that the whole show was streamed live on the internet. I’m glad they chose us to kick the whole thing off, it’s a real honour. It’s one of those things that you can’t really believe doesn’t already exist, it’s just so perfect. I can’t wait to see how far it goes and to watch it back myself and watch my own highlights on my phone.”.

We can’t imagine that the technology is going to benefit most of the acts featured in FACT any time soon, but it seems like a step in the right direction for larger shows that’s for certain, even if shelling out even more cash for live music probably isn’t on most people’s minds right now. [via The Guardian]