Kids are not too far in the future. But where most couples would liven up their dining rooms with plants, pottery, or maybe a piece of sculpture, the Shiners display racks and racks of electronic recording gear and a collection of looming CD towers. Rob and Sharon are tapers. Tapers and their companion hobbyists, tape traders, form a subculture of music fans dedicated to the live-concert experience.
Live music is the soundtrack to their lives.
Contrary to what the media would have you think, music sharing didn t begin with Napster. It originated in the tape-trading community. Now, as Napster begins to crumble under pressure from the recording industry, the tape-trading community continues to grow, free of the legal pressures that plague bootleggers, CD pirates, and online file traders. Bringing together the sonic fanaticism of audiophiles, the breathless promotion of fanzine scribblers, and the obsessive tendencies of archivists and museum curators, tapers see themselves as defenders of American music culture collecting, cataloguing, and disseminating a body of music that would otherwise be lost forever. With many more bands following suit, tape trading could become the next Napster a form of grassroots music distribution paralleling the recording industry, but free of corporate influence and commercial pressure.