Bands Improvise a Way to Live-Stream Shows For music fans, more and more consumption these days happens through online streaming services like Pandora, Spotify and TuneIn. But when it comes to live shows there's not much out there: for the most part, only big festivals and promoters have had the resources to send as-it-happens audio over the Internet. That may be changing, however, as more musicians like Ryan Montbleau experiment with streaming on a budget. Mr. Montbleau, 34, is a typical journeyman musician, leading his group, the Ryan Montbleau Band, in feel-good retro funk for about 200 club dates a year. Since January, he has been webcasting all of his concerts live through a system worthy of Rube Goldberg: after capturing the audio on a mixing console, the band bounces the signal to two apps and then to an iPhone, which transmits the show to the band's Web page for anyone to hear. So far the online audience has numbered in the dozens, Mr. Montbleau said, but it's growing fast. "The other night we had more people listening to the stream than were at the show," he said before one recent show in Manhattan, as the band's sound engineer tweaked the levels during a sound check. It is relatively rare for bands like Mr. Montbleau's to use such audio streams. The Web site Daytrotter, which makes stripped-down recordings with touring bands, beams live sessions to registered members. Wolfgang's Vault, the concert archive site that owns a majority share of Daytrotter, streams some shows from clubs like the Living Room in New York. To stream his band's shows, Mr. Montbleau's keyboardist and resident techie, Jason Cohen, found a way to link Audio Hijack Pro and Nicecast, two apps made by the software company Rogue Amoeba. It wasn't hacking exactly, but the connection was unusual enough that Rogue Amoeba's chief executive, Paul Kafasis, asked Mr. Cohen how he had pulled it off. "They combined two of our tools in a way we haven't seen before," Mr. Kafasis said in a telephone interview. And what they are doing with it, broadcasting live shows, we haven't seen a whole lot of. Aside from the technology, another barrier for bands has been the tangle of necessary rights and permissions. Historically, promoters have sometimes demanded a payment or royalty - usually called an origination fee - for a live recording or broadcast. Mr. Montbleau and Mr. Cohen said their streams had been approved by each club manager - but one. "One venue owner said he didn't want bands streaming to fans that didn't pay to get into the show," Mr. Cohen said. I respected that. And then I just used my iPhone and did it on the sly. In addition to the streams, which are free, the band also posts its live recordings after every show, with payment optional. So far these efforts haven't contributed a great deal to the group's bottom line, Mr. Montbleau said, but that's not his goal anyway. "In the long run I hope it's just going to bring more people out to the shows," he said, "because they want to be there when it happens."