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For the last four years, the website
Baytaper.com has tirelessly compiled audio and video of jazz and other live music performances in San Francisco, turning shows into multimedia nuggets that the public can view and download for free -- pictures, MP3s, picture-and-audio slideshows, you name it. Over the weekend, the site impressively surpassed one million downloads. What makes that even more amazing is that the whole site is run by one guy. This guy has a full name, but he prefers to be known on the web by his first name, Bill.
"It's not about
me or my techniques," Baytaper Bill told us in an email, after we sent him a few questions. "It's about the music and the local scene if you know
what I mean -- at least that's my personal philosophy."
Anyway, to celebrate what he calls "going platinum" in downloads, Bill compiled the top 50 most downloaded MP3 files into one post. The winner, with almost 22,000 downloads, is a 2007 performance by the
Trumpet Supergroup. In addition to the professional photographs and track lists from each event, Bill's enthusiasm for the art form is evident from his detailed descriptions of the performers and how they sounded.
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