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This will be the 'virtual concerts': how to enjoy live from home

2020-09-07T14:00:19.791Z


Live music advances to adapt to the new times. So you can keep going to concerts without leaving home


Society is in the process of adapting to the new reality forced by the coronavirus pandemic and this process implies the adoption of new habits, as is the case with virtual concerts.

When the pandemic began, musicians around the world launched into offering free digital performances.

The watchword was "be there"

:

passion prevailed at the expense of technical quality.

It was curious to see idols like Taylor Swift, the Rolling Stones, Chris Martin (or in Spain Alejandro Sanz or Robe Iniesta) in crappy home recordings, once sounded out of tune.

Months later, the business has arrived.

One of the main names that is preparing to enter the business is Spotify.

The Danish

streaming

music giant

has leaked a new feature that would allow its subscribers to attend virtual concerts in which, logically, it would not be necessary to travel or attend venues.

There has been no official announcement from the firm, but it has been the engineer Jane Manchun Wong, who has already successfully leaked new Spotify releases in the past, who has shown the world what this transgressive feature will look like.

This new service will be known as

Virtual Events

and will allow users of the service to know the date and time of the virtual concerts of their favorite artists and listen to them live from their devices.

Direct from the living room

Spotify has not officially positioned itself before this leak and the details of the new service are not known either, but everything seems to indicate that it is a way to monetize concerts exclusively through its platform.

It is not clear how the service will work, but from the leaks we can deduce that Spotify users will be able to search for virtual concerts and from the application itself they can listen to them live.

The company has extensive experience connecting artists with their audience and it is not new in this field: it has agreements with ticketing platforms such as Ticketmaster and Eventbrite through which its subscribers could purchase tickets for face-to-face concerts. of its main artists.

In this case, Spotify would do the same but virtually and predictably, with exclusive content for its users.

Other options to enjoy live music

Nick Cave alone in Alexandra Palace, London, with his piano while a camera films him for the concert in streaming.

It was July 23.

Joel ryan

Olivier Geynet is the commercial director for Spain of Dice, an English company and one of the leaders in the sector, responsible for the

online

sales

of, for example, the Primavera Sound festival, and organizer of Cave's intimate recital at Alexandra Palace. ”From covid-19, in addition to making smart ticket sales, our business is

online

payment concerts

.

In March, 90% of these recitals on our platform were free;

today 82% are paid ”, said recently this Frenchman who has lived in Spain for 22 years.

Geynet has no doubt that these kinds of concerts will stick around even after the pandemic.

"What's more: we are already negotiating with the 2021 festival editions two types of tickets: face-to-face and

streaming," he

reports.

Geynet gives the example of football when the pandemic did not exist: “You can go to the Camp Nou or the Metropolitano, or watch the game from home on television.

So it will be with concerts ”.

In internet products, the one that offers the most functions does not always occupy a leadership position, but rather the one that achieves hegemony in number of users.

A good example of this is WhatsApp, which always seems to be one step behind its rivals in performance, and in the case of live shows, two platforms set the pace thanks to an inordinate number of users: YouTube and Facebook.

The first does not need presentations in the field of video and the developers adopted the live ones on their platform with amazing ease.

Actually, anyone with YouTube could hold their own concert with the simple press of a button, but it is because of the number of users that Google's product is usually the usual choice for their

live-streams

.

This platform allows a resolution up to 4K (always depending, of course, on the viewer's bandwidth) and potentially up to 36 hours of uninterrupted broadcast.

On the other hand, who better than Google to talk about monetization and this is possible thanks to ads and

super chats

(live donations).

Facebook competes head-to-head with YouTube in this field and also has a platform for live broadcasts: Facebook Live.

As with YouTube, Facebook Live integrates very naturally into the application through a simple button that can turn anyone who is encouraged into an artist, but its high number of users makes it a channel of natural choice for women. bands for the direct ones.

The alternative of Mark Zuckerberg's team, of course, has more limitations than YouTube by limiting the resolution of the live shows to 720p (far from the 4K of the first ones), the duration of the broadcast to 4 hours, and what is more importantly, a monetization that is not direct, as is the case with YouTube.

Even so, Facebook Live continues to be a popular platform for live broadcasts, although more focused on the field of news.

If a few months ago it would have seemed somewhat remote to consider Instagram live streaming as a way of watching live music, the pandemic has shown just the opposite: it is a powerful tool at the service of musicians who do not need (nor do their audiences need it). demands), high video and audio quality.

A good example of this has been the account on the social network of Chris Martin, vocal of Coldplay, who to encourage his followers in the uncertain moments of confinement, did not hesitate to pick up his guitar and interpret with great naturalness songs from the repertoire of the band.

This tool allows up to one hour of live broadcasting and, brand of the house, the recording is vertical, as a good mobile product that it is.

Virtual reality has also appeared in music.

An example is the application carried out by Melody VR.

This platform allows the user to go virtually to the concert - thanks to the use of virtual reality glasses - and even choose the point from which they can see their band, being able to change their location at will.

Melody VR obviously offers a much more

immersive experience

since you can enjoy the music from the stage itself (even if we are really at home).

The user can pay for the broadcast of the entire concert or for individual songs, and its great handicap is that it will require the acquisition of virtual reality glasses to obtain a total experience.

What is the future?

But, beyond the platforms ... Are we facing the future of concerts or a provisional adaptation of them?

Íñigo Argomániz, CEO of the musical promoter Get In, considers that these types of products are "a temporary transition" towards new technologies that were doomed to arrive.

This expert maintains that face-to-face concerts are far from disappearing and in fact, little by little they are being held respecting the strictest security measures.

"Not a single contagion is known in the concerts we have organized," he explains, but nevertheless acknowledges that the pandemic has only precipitated the adoption of new technologies that sooner or later would settle in this sector.

Where is the business really in this service?

Argomániz warns of an error that many have made when making the leap from face-to-face to virtual concert: offering the same recital in streaming in several sessions.

That is, a determined artist can celebrate the same concert in different cities and achieve a full house in all of them;

in this case, the artists seamlessly repeat the sequence of performances because the audience is always new.

This does not happen with virtual concerts: once you attend one there is no reason to repeat it unless you are an absolute fan of the band.

In a virtual environment, "repeating the same concert does not work: what works is exclusive content", explains this music promoter.

In this sense, artists can more easily monetize an event that will only be broadcast once on a given platform, a special that fans of the bands will not be able to miss.

Ultimately, it is about repeating the business model that streaming television platforms such as Netflix or HBO already apply: making the content they broadcast exclusively profitable, although in this case it is through subscription.

It is not clear how Spotify intends to make this new function profitable, although it is assumed that it would be in the same way an extra content for its subscribers.

In testing phase, at the moment

Jane Manchung Wong, the engineer who has revealed this new functionality, has confirmed to EL PAÍS that "for the moment" the mystery button takes the user to the Spotify page dedicated to concerts, although everything seems to indicate that this is only the first step and most likely, access to the virtual concerts will be done without leaving the application itself.

Spotify will play the card of a high mass of users to tempt artists to offer concerts exclusively in a transition that will not end traditional concerts, but will allow fans of music groups to enjoy an additional form of attend their live shows.

However, this new way of listening to live music will face another enemy to be reckoned with: lack of time.

Argomániz recalls that attending a concert offers a "global experience" to the fan, in which they are with friends and possibly enjoy a beer or food afterwards, but "no one is going to spend two hours glued to the mobile listening to a live show" , warns the CEO of Get In.

In this sense, it is possible that this service is aimed at a niche market of the most staunch fans of a given band who do not hesitate not to miss a single chord of the new songs or direct from it.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-09-07

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