In the earliest days of lockdown, livestreams provided a much-needed emotional bridge between artists and fans. Tours and festivals were cancelled but technology was able to offer a way for acts to remain front and centre in consumers’ minds. The focus was initially more on connections than on commerce.
There certainly was fan interest, but it was unclear if there was a business model here. Slowly, the waters started being tested.
Laura Marling’s show at the Union Chapel in London in early June (pictured above) was notable for being one of the first paid livestreams by a major act in lockdown and was immediately jumped on as a signpost to the future. Entry was only possible if fans bought a ticket (costing £12 in Europe) in advance and Pollstar reported that 4,500 tickets were sold, meaning a gross of £54,000. For her to replicate that in the real world at the 900-capacity venue, she would have had to sell it out at £60 a ticket. A second show was put on for American audiences and it saw 2,000 tickets (at $12 each) being sold, meaning a gross of $24,000.
While these were impressive numbers, the problem here is that this is hard to turn into a tour-like experience and have the act play multiple nights. It becomes a one-night digital residency and earnings, as a result, get capped.
Then the megastars stepped forward.
Without wishing to throw shade at what Laura Marling achieved, BTS were, given the size and the hyper-enthusiasm of their fanbase, always going to do something on a completely different level. Big Hit Entertainment, their management company, reports that the group’s 90-minute streamed show (Bang Bang Con: The Live) on 14 June drew, at its peak, an audience of 756,000 concurrent viewers from 107 different countries. Members of the BTS fanclub were charged 29,000 won (around $23.80) while non-members had to pay 39,000 won ($32.10). That means, at an absolute minimum, the show grossed around $18m.
Big Hit adds that news of the concert drove 10,000 new memberships to their fanclub, which costs 33,000 won ($27.17) a year, meaning an additional $271,700 in revenue.
These two examples – and BTS in particular – are for now the exceptions rather than the rule, but they do show what is possible. They have also helped to plant a seed in the mind of fans that livestreams can be worth paying for and also revealing to acts and managers that content they might normally have given away for free around a show or a festival performance – especially with a partner like YouTube handling the technical aspects – can have real financial worth.
The context of viewing – fans stuck at home during a pandemic and desperate for some engagement with their favourite performers – was exceptional, but it should not necessarily follow that, when venues and festivals return to something approaching normality, livestreaming at scale just becomes an anachronism or a relic of the near past, reduced to being a mere musical madeleine.
Yet, to make livestreaming a genuine contender and viable parallel economy to shows in actual venues alongside other actual fans, is far from a straight path.
There are a number of issues buzzing around here that need to, like a Red Arrows display, slot into a formation that not only looks spectacular but that can also sustain itself.
Here we outline the key issues, highlight what has been achieved so far and hypothesise about what might happen when concerts fully return and livestreaming is no longer the only show in town.
Issue #1: livestreaming needs proper and lasting licensing
Progress status: As lockdown happened around the world, acts and venues quickly turned to livestreaming as a means of filling the void. While previously major platforms or dedicated streaming services were on hand to help with some of the licensing issues, there was a feeling many were making a leap into the great unknown here.
Legal firm Reed Smith were quick to publish a legal guide to livestreaming, explaining just what the licensing issues are and how they should be navigated. “Live streaming is by no means a new phenomenon,” it said, but the report also laid bare just how complex it all is in regard to things like moral rights, performers’ rights and trademark rights – as well as why monetisation can only happen when all these licensing hurdles have been cleared.
Business writer Cherie Hu published an article mere days later that laid out just how Byzantine licensing for a livestream is and why many of those happening at the time were only partially licensed or not even licensed at all. “What I want to drive home is that you cannot talk about the financial longevity of livestreaming in the music business without also talking about rights,” she wrote.
What has been notable in livestreaming since March is just how quickly it has charged forward in not just technological and creative terms (more of which below), but also in licensing terms, especially with regard to publishing rights.
What has been notable in livestreaming since March is just how quickly it has charged forward in not just technological and creative terms, but also in licensing terms, especially with regard to publishing rights.
By the end of May, SOCAN has launched its Encore! programme to cover virtual shows on Facebook and Instagram and to start to pay through royalties. It stated that such shows are eligible for a total payment of Can $150, but there were some caveats, including that the show must last for at least 30 minutes, it has to contain a minimum of 10 songs and draw in at least 100 viewers. The PRO has set aside Can $200,000 each quarter for this, with interim CEO Jennifer Brown telling Billboard, “We’re not aware of other music rights organizations conducting a similar initiative. The SOCAN Encore! program is a special distribution from our Facebook license.”
Within a few weeks, SACEM in France had created its own payment scheme, calling it an “exceptional authors’ rights remuneration specially adapted to the livestreams played during the difficult period we are experiencing”. It said it already had agreements in place with major platforms like YouTube and Facebook/Instagram and was in negotiations with other platforms. Payments are tiered depending on how long the stream is, with SACEM allocating €46.35 for shows up to 20 minutes in length and €76 for those over 20 minutes.
Against this, however, other platforms were in the crosshairs of rightsowners, with Twitch gamers recently being served with a flurry of DMCA notices. Most of these were aimed at gamers using music in the background or inside games rather than artists doing their own shows on the platform, but it shows how the licensing net was still being tightened.
David Israelite, CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association, told Billboard, “We are concerned about unlicensed songs being used on Twitch and are exploring all options to protect the songwriters and music publishers who we represent.”
That said, acts have been turning to Twitch during lockdown as a platform for livestreaming shows, with acts like Kenny Beats performing regular shows there and drawing over 100,000 followers as a result.
“Music is growing like crazy right now,” Mike Olson, Twitch’s head of music, told Bloomberg. “We’re seeing a lot of artists who, for all the reasons you’re aware of, are in need of a place to connect with fans and a way to make up for revenue they’d normally get on the road.”
Next steps: As with all rights online, this is a two-way street: platforms need to ensure uploaded or streamed content (be it from the acts themselves or an individual like a gamer) are licensed but can get taken down if it is not; and PROs/publishers/other rightsowners need to have systems in place to make licensing as straightforward as possible.
There are always going to be some consciously seeking to circumvent the rules, but there is also going to be some naiveté here as acts, particularly smaller ones, race to livestreaming just to connect with audiences and haven’t thought how to clear licences in advance. The reality is that many here are learning on the hoof. As such, mistakes will be made and lines may be crossed – often unintentionally and without malice.
What SOCAN and SACEM are doing is pointing the way for others, showing that licensing can adapt quickly to the times and not show up after the wave has passed.
What SOCAN and SACEM are doing is pointing the way for others, showing that licensing can adapt quickly to the times and not show up after the wave has passed.
If artists are to experiment more here post-lockdown, they need to hear more positive stories from peers about how licensing can help them and fewer horror stories from those who got badly burned.
Issue #2: livestreaming needs an egalitarian business model
Progress status: For every Laura Marling, BTS and Live From Out There festival that are making impressive or even staggering sums of money, there are many acts who will never be able to charge an entry fee or, if they did, only a handful of fans would bother showing up.
The danger is that, as with audio streaming, a new class system bifurcates the live streaming business whereby the biggest acts (who are not exactly staring penury in the eye) can charge for digital tickets, but smaller acts (the ones who are living hand to mouth and for whom touring is their major source of income) cannot draw big enough audiences to make the numbers work for paid attendance.
Equally, turning to brands to partly or wholly bankroll the undertaking – as Take That did with Compare The Market or Amazon Music is doing for the likes of deadmau5 and Katy Perry – means only the biggest acts will attract the brands or DSPs willing to pay.
While Travis Scott or Marshmello can pull massive crowds into Fortnite and sell them skins and emotes while they are there, most acts will never be invited onto such hallowed digital soil. It is not even like it is a level playing field overall. Anyone can do a livestream, but only the elite get ushered into the major worlds and platforms where real money can be made.
Anyone can do a livestream, but only the elite get ushered into the major worlds and platforms where real money can be made.
While there is a lot of talk about streaming in general (including livestreaming) making up for the industry deficit caused by the pandemic, the long-term focus really should be less on replacing affected revenue streams during lockdown (like the estimated loss of ¥300bn in Japan) and more on supplementing them post-lockdown. And it needs to go beyond just seeing a rise in social followers around livestreams as the only reasonable victory that is achievable here.
The industry is already starting to measure this part of the business, with Pollstar in the US now running weekly charts to replace the data hole left when normal shows were cancelled. If the momentum is strong enough after lockdown, it would not be unreasonable to expect a livestreaming chart to sit alongside the “normal” live chart.
Pollstar is already hypothesising about what that could look like. Its box office editor Brad Rogers recently told Variety, “I think we’ll see a lot of hybrid shows, where for $20 you can go see the show in-person and for $10 you can watch it on a livestream.”
Andy Gensler, executive editor of Pollstar, added, “Streaming in the way it is now will probably forever be a part inextricably of a live musician’s business model. They can use it to promote themselves or have an event when they have a new record out or preview a tour. It’s just so much more accessible now and more part of the mix than it ever was before COVID-19.”
If livestreaming is to provide a parallel business to actual shows, then they need to adopt and adapt some of the thinking and behaviour of actual shows.
Next steps: If livestreaming is to provide a parallel business to actual shows, then they need to adopt and adapt some of the thinking and behaviour of actual shows. Rather than just have one act performing and taking all the glory as well as all the money, they can have start to be programmed like a show or a festival, with a multitude of support acts of different sizes getting to perform and the revenues being split between them.
Oh, and there should absolutely be no pay to play.
Issue #3: livestreaming needs to properly become its own category and create an appeal beyond the pandemic
Progress status: While any focus on livestreaming – keeping artists in the public eye, connecting with fans and, just maybe, making money – is a good thing, there is a risk of it all becoming a stopgap that fades into insignificance as soon as venues open their doors and festivals open their gates. They could become, to quote REM’s ‘The One I Love’, a simple prop to occupy our time. Being a placeholder has its role, but they invariably get cast to the side and forgotten about when the main event finally comes round again.
Given the speed of innovation here in recent weeks, it would be a shame if livestreaming went the same way. And at the heart of all of this is the need for livestreams to become their own category and judged on their own terms rather than being begrudgingly accepted just because the bleak alternative is no live music at all.
Here is the existential crisis at the heart of livestreaming now. As real world shows incrementally return, the actual need for a livestream could exponentially decline. The stronger the real world concert business gets, the weaker livestreaming’s argument for its own existence becomes.
The stronger the real world concert business gets, the weaker livestreaming’s argument for its own existence becomes.
Which is why livestreaming needs to establish itself as its own category – having characteristics and an appeal unique to itself, not just sitting as a simulation of actual concerts. In doing that, it can work alongside shows in real venues and at real festivals. As fans get used to livestreaming under exceptional circumstances, there needs to be a way to draw them back when live music returns to how it was. Rather than being a photocopy of the original, it should look to establish its place as an extension of the original.
But it can’t do this by being the poor relation of a real wold concert; it has to go beyond that and make its own rules. It doesn’t have to be – and it shouldn’t have to be – either/or.
Next steps: That technological innovation – blending the real and the virtual – needs to be applied to the shows as well. While following how live shows were conducted in the real world is only natural (there needs to be a comforting sense of the familiar to draw audiences in), there should also be a creative fork in road where real-world gigs do X, Y and Z but virtual gigs not only do X, Y and Z but also A, B and C. There is a particular viewing context and so the performances need to understand, adapt to and capitalise on those particularities.
The rhythm of livestreams are different from the rhythm of live shows – where the audience and performer have to be carried along on the same wave of energy in the room and there is barely a pause for breath, both sides holding each other in the air for the duration. Shows could become less, well, showy. They do not have to be quite so frenetic. They can be broken up with live Q&As with the fans, or have the artists tell stories about their biggest hits or their most obscure songs, or they can take requests and have live votes on what, from a pre-agreed list of songs, will be played next. They can become a safe space to experiment and allow the performers to go off script in a way they can’t when touring as they have to follow a particular narrative as dictated by the staging and production cues.
In doing this – and doing it properly – livestreaming can become an ancillary revenue source rather than a form of digital busking to tide artists over until they can get properly back on tour.
In doing this – and doing it properly – livestreaming can become an ancillary revenue source rather than a form of digital busking to tide artists over until they can get properly back on tour.
We have seen it with the likes of Miro Shot and Prospa pushing the boundaries of VR and live performance, the former blurring the lines between a live show and an installation on their Virtual Worlds Tour while the latter showed how to bring raving to a 3D virtual warehouse.
Jean-Michel Jarre, an artist who knows more than most about how to harness technology to put on spectacular one-off shows, has also got involved here, recently performing a live VR show that was available to watch in both 2D and 3D. “Having performed in extraordinary venues, virtual reality will now allow me to play in unimaginable spaces while remaining on a physical stage,” he said.
There were also relatively simple ideas like Tom Walker doing a “world tour” in a day, across seven performances scheduled to work for different timezones, making them feel exclusive by seriously restricting the number of people who could attend each one to a mere handful. And Orville Peck performed an exclusive VR show for Oculus Venue that was done in partnership with Supersphere, the immersive content company.
This is a chance to rethink what a concert is, where the language of performance could change to suit this whole new context and how this could be monetised. That is the ultimate challenge for livestreaming: it needs to become its own category, not live music’s poor relation.
Then maybe, just maybe, livestreaming could become an ancillary revenue source to going on the road rather than being treated as a handy but temporary parking space.
