Livestreaming Archives • 8Sided Blog

Wiki-Nature Wordplay

November 19, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Bandcamp’s Live Stream Platform → After some September trial runs with live online concerts from Mary Lattimore, Matmos, and Sarah Davachi, Bandcamp has announced a public launch of its live stream platform. This live stream feature is built from the foundation of a retail music site instead of a video networking tool adapted for music performance. And because the backend is Bandcamp — and pretty much every band has a Bandcamp presence — there’s a much lower barrier to entry than something like Dice.

Livestreams will incorporate many of Bandcamp’s existing tools, such as fan messaging and merch sales. An added feature is a live chat window, which includes notifications when fans buy merch items. Bands can sell tickets to their live stream concerts, with Bandcamp taking 10% of the revenue (and no Ticketmaster-ish hidden fees). Until the first of April 2021, Bandcamp will waive this fee.

I find the announcement exciting. It’s, at the same time, a natural next-step for Bandcamp and an outside-of-the-box move. All bets are on this live stream platform being a big hit, positioning Bandcamp as a contender in this field once the pandemic subsides. Live stream concerts aren’t going anywhere, folks.

I’d love to see Bandcamp continue developing the platform to add things like geofencing, which would allow bands to do virtual ‘tours.’ And maybe an option to chain bands together under a single ticket for festivals and opening slots. I also want to see the bands step things up — to use this in surprising and unusual ways, rather than simply livestreaming some musicians playing in a living room.

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The Fall in 1980 → The beginning of this article on The Quietus posits that your favorite album by The Fall is the first one you’ve heard. They’ve got a kazillion albums, so I can see how difficult it is to choose a favorite objectively. The first one I heard was This Nation’s Saving Grace, rescued from a cut-out bin while I was in college. Yeah, it’s my favorite. But, man, I do like a lot of other Fall albums, too.

Angus Batey, the writer of this Quietus piece, is fascinated by Fall singer Mark E. Smith’s lyrics. I’d say that’s the case with all listeners of this often challenging band. But Batey alludes to connections and references I hadn’t realized, portraying Smith’s oeuvre as a self-contained musical wiki of sorts. The Fall exercised intricate and interconnected world-building through the band’s presentation, lyrics, and identifiable sound. What’s remarkable is that Smith latched on to this, nearly formed, at such a young age. Early Fall was more ramshackle, but it’s still The Fall we recognize years later. The essential bits were always in place.

Here’s Batey on the wiki-nature of Smith’s wordplay:

Where to begin? And at what point would you believe you’d finished figuring out what the hell was going on? Perhaps it’s better not to start, and just delight in how [Mark E.] Smith uses his brilliant band like a stage conjuror uses the cape and top hat – as a diversion and a distraction, cloaking the deception. It’s little wonder contemporary critics baffled by Grotesque thought Smith was hiding something. In many ways they were right. […] Anyone trying to critique and catalogue and contextualise this stuff as it came out was doomed to fail. It’s too deep, too densely packed, too rich in allusion and scope and too well-read and learned in its reference points, even in an era with so much more information so easily locatable as is the case in 21st-century internet-enabled present. Back in 1980, nobody really had a chance.

If you’re not familiar with The Fall, then I’m not sure if this article will pique your curiosity or drive you away. But The Fall were that kind of band, really. If it’s curiosity, then I’d start with This Nation’s Saving Grace — though, as it’s my first Fall album, I’m biased.

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Steve Jansen – “The Extinct Suite” (video) → I randomly happened across this video for a song by Steve Jansen, ex-Japan drummer and otherwise storied musician and producer. The tune hails from 2017’s ambient solo album of the same name. “The Extinct Suite” — the only track on the album — is 56-minutes long, but we are treated to a nearly 5-minute excerpt for the video. This video is remarkable, created by German photographer and animator Anna Malina. Her Tumblr blog shows some of the original prints and their assembly for this dark, visual feast. I was intensely into photography while in college — my second nostalgic college reference in this post — but got bored after a few years. If I had the vision to stretch the medium’s possibilities as Malina does, I bet I would have kept at it.

On the Guest List: VIP Clubbing Goes Virtual

April 16, 2020 · Leave a Comment

We hear a lot about virtual concerts, with artists and bands performing using various tools (Twitch, Instagram, YouTube, and so on). These tools were (at least) tangentially created for these uses. Twitch is perhaps the most appropriated, initially intended as a video gaming platform, and now hosting all manner of live experiences.

Zoom is now being led far astray from its original purpose. It’s a business conferencing platform transformed into an engine for the likes of happy hour meet-ups, birthday celebrations, and family check-ins. Despite its immediate growing pains and merited controversies, Zoom is leading the isolation zeitgeist, inspiring memes, and brilliant #stayathome music videos:

Bands are successfully adapting their performances and experiences to the livestreaming space, but what about the nightclubs? That leads to another unexpected role for the Zoom platform: the virtual VIP club. As this article in Bloomberg reveals, “Just as a choose-your-own-adventure book hacks the static nature of a novel, these parties are hacking corporate technology for new purposes.” Here’s more:

In some senses, if you’ve been to one Zoom club, you’ve been to them all. The platform’s layout is always the same: A featured musician performs a set underneath a carousel of small windows with voyeuristic views into people dancing or lounging in their homes. Channeling the true spirit of nightlife, it’s up to the crowd to create the party’s vibe via active participation—turning down the lights, throwing on a costume, talking to each other in the group chat. These social interactions can feel new and awkward, but we’re hungry for it.

These ‘clubs’ are more elaborate than you might think. Zoom’s technology allows for multiple rooms, including ‘secret’ rooms that require a password. Each room can have a theme, or a DJ, or a dress code. There are sponsors — according to the article, Red Bull and Paper Magazine are in on the act — as well as bouncers and mingling celebrities. And ideas for monetization are materializing.

The biggest Zoom nightclubs — and some of them are quite big — were dreamed up by desperate promoters no longer able to throw parties in the meatspace. And, as happens with these things, finding ways around one set of limitations reveals new possibilities. As one promoter says in the piece, “We now have access to people who can’t attend clubs because they have children, social anxiety, disabilities, or live in places that don’t have clubs.”

The requirement is that we all agree a space — virtual or otherwise — is a nightclub. This idea reminds me of the time I was invited to an exclusive day time event on the beach in Miami. When I arrived, I found an impromptu nightclub, created by a large circle of folding chairs connected with rope. Inside the circle, there were about 50 people, a bunch of coolers serving as the bar, and a DJ priming the sandy dance floor. There was a cover charge — though you could hear the music just as well outside of the ring of chairs, you weren’t inside the circle (literally and metaphorically), so, incredibly, people were paying for the privilege. I knew the promoter and he motioned me in, like lifting some invisible velvet rope. I followed him into the ‘club’ and discovered there was an additional half-circle at the far end of the circle of chairs — a lip in the larger ring that served as the VIP room. Remember — this was all happening on an open public beach, an exclusive nightclub invented by some rope, a lot of folding chairs, and the participants agreeing on the idea.

It seems these spaces for creating community alongside a sense of exclusivity can exist anywhere. I admit, my first thought was a dismissive one upon hearing about the Zoom nightclubs, which is why I thought about Miami Beach. But now I see these virtual clubs as an inventive way for some promoters to adapt to the Strange Times and for stuck-at-home party people to recapture the clubbing experience. As with a lot of the recently concocted ad hoc solutions for maintaining a hint of normalcy, the concept will likely outlast COVID-19 and spawn new platforms. I’ll see you on the dance floor.

Update: I expanded on this post in the latest issue of my weekly newsletter. Check it out here.

Exploring New Opportunities in Livestreaming

April 14, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Quarantine has led to the proliferation of livestreamed concerts, confirming the need for music in uncertain times. I’d guess that many more people are checking out livestreams than regularly went to shows before the pandemic. And like every other change that’s occurred in quarantine’s wake, there’s a lot of thought on how livestreaming might remain established once things normalize (fingers crossed). Before COVID-19, there were suggestions that virtual touring might gain popularity as a means to offset the environmental toll of actual touring. Current events have pushed the prospect to the forefront for entirely different reasons.

It seems there are two main categories of livestreamed concerts. First, there’s the streamed band performance, like a concert movie with the artists playing a straightforward set from a stage. And, secondly, the intimate live-from-home show, where band members — individually or together — perform casual, stripped-down versions of songs. The nature of live-streaming changes the dynamics of performance through its limitations, but, for the most part, it’s an imitation of an in-person performance. Here’s Cherie Hu in Pitchfork:

Recreating such emotions in livestreaming requires taking advantage of the medium, which often means getting rid of the superfluous spectacle you might otherwise see in normal stage setups. From the fan’s perspective, the “stage” in a livestream is just the screen, and the audience is the chat room. There’s a diminished sense of hierarchy between artist and the fan, leading to interactions that can be much more social, interactive, and intimate.

There’s a lot for the artist to lean into here. The trick is emphasizing the unique aspects of livestreaming — the loss of hierarchy, the ability to interact with fans (and for them to interact with each other), the flat screen — rather than relying on what’s lost. The platforms that win are the ones that build features that could only exist in a digitally livestreamed ecosystem. And the artists fully exploring and exploiting these features will have the upper hand, too.

Creating experiences that are exclusive to a live-streaming format — you won’t get this in clubs! — also adds possibilities for monetization. The key is giving something special, not found elsewhere. Free streams of concerts are found all over YouTube, and, to offer a high-profile example, Coachella livestreamed the last few festivals without any fee. As DJs are also finding out with their DJ sets, years of offering performances for free makes monetization of similar content difficult. Getting creative and thinking far outside of what happens in a club environment is a must.

Another note: if, after COVID-19, live-streaming remains an established part of a band’s marketing and income toolbox, then I see an opportunity for studio spaces and music venues. Many cities could have brick-and-mortar ‘livestream studios’ where bands could perform. These spaces would have the technology and infrastructure to stream performances and make each one distinct and tailored to the act. The interactive and livestream-exclusive features I mention above are built-in, with each studio offering a different specialty or feature set. Engineers and staff are on hand to manage technical as well as online (e.g., chatroom and social media) tasks. The artist would book a date, plan the details of the performance, show up, and play. The business could be stand-alone, or part of a live music venue, a recording studio, or even a co-working space. And it’s not just for bands — theatrical plays, author readings, performance art, and academic talks are some of the other potential client use cases. If live-streaming continues its path to normalization and you’re an entrepreneur looking for a future business idea, this might be something to consider.