The newest venue - online concerts

[DaNolman]

At the road rally, I asked someone at the mentor lunch about "showing up". Point being, are there viable alternatives to traveling around the country for gigs? Will anything ever replace that and will artists be able to perform from their home locations and be able to reach a substantial part of their fanbase (and more importantly, make some scratch from doing so).

Just a few couple of months ago, the answer was pretty much yes, that you have to be there in person. Bummer.

But we just found a pretty awesome site that allows you to do concerts from the comfort of your own living room or studio with just your webcam. You can even sell tickets (for as little as 10 cents on up) and merch!!! We were pretty much blown away and are testing it out by doing a christmas concert.

Anybody out in Taxi land ever use Stageit.com? We're trying it out and will be able to offer pointers once we hammer out the kinks.

I watched someone else's concert yesterday. I was one of 10 people watching and wonder if the other 9 were his friends/family. Wonder if they were thinking "who dat?". Anyway, there's a chat feature that lets the viewers chat during the performance. I asked the Stageit support if there were a way to mute chatters if they typed something inappropriate (or spammed etc.). As of yet, there is no way to "mute" anyone. Mgmt can close accounts if they get rowdy, but that person can just make up a new account and buy back in for a dime or whatever you set your price at.

The other question I had for them was if content had to be music related. They said no. So, in a sense, you could hold debates, read poetry, dance recitals, or whatever!!!

Pretty cool stuffffff

[mojobone]

I signed up, but I'm experiencing 'technical difficulties', and will be unable to launch a live streaming show, for the time being. I'm considering just videotaping and editing a YouTube series; bypasses the streaming issues I've been having. (I hear there's been a lot of that going around, heh) My idea was similar to yours; I get too tired of breaking out portions of my studio gear to drive miles and play music for drunks, and need a new challenge. Playing for more or less sober people over the 'net seems like a fair compromise, and StageIt offers a way to monetize it, even. (soon as I get some bugs worked out)

[DaNolman]

Maybe you can ask for a donation for the youtube series to monetize?

I'm quickly finding that while music concerts by themselves are great, adding something interactive to the mix makes it even better.

The other day, one of the guys from the band Stryper just answered questions for an hour. It was GREAT! He had 50 people watching.

Artists have the ability to interact with the audience using the chat feature. Another guy I watched took requests from the chat window.

Other cool things to know about the site . . .

If you want to be a "featured" artist there are 2 parts. 1. You just need to request it and 2, sell 30 tickets.

The other thing, if you aren't a featured artist, the other artists are sorted by date of concert and popularity based on ticket sales. You can probably be in the top spot with 10 - 15 sales! At least for now until this thing catches on.

Good luck Mojo. Let me know when you do your youtube or Stageit series and I'll be sure to tune in. I heard your song played at the Rally and I must say, of the 100+ songs played, top 10 of the weekend for sure!

[cardell]

This sounds interesting.

I'll go and check it out.

Stuart

[mojobone]

Currently, there's no convenient way to monetize a YouTube series in a meaningful way, without metric tons of views, and I'd be limited to all original material by the terms of service. Right now, it looks like replacing my main computer is the only way to move forward with StageIt, though it does seem like a very nice ground floor opportunity; my friends Brace & Cooper are doing a weekly show already, and have attracted a small, yet devoted following. I have a vibrant community of great local musicians on tap; a weekly series could throw off some sparks.

[DaNolman]

I just signed up for Youtube's monetization. I wonder how much the popular sites like young turks and nigahiga get for ads???? If they're consistently getting millions of views, you'd think they could make a living off of youtube. Imagine, the first Youtube millionaires!

Mojo, if you were in L.A., we'd be more than happy to let you use anything you needed to produce a show! I like the sound of your weekly series!

[cherbear]

Yep - we read about this recently too. Looks interesting. We're planning on trying it out soo, as well. Will keep u posted - -keep us posted too!!!
Cher

[DaNolman]

UPDATE!

So we had our concert last night and it was a resounding success! There were 27 attendees and the chat was so much fun. It really adds another dimension when you can interact with the audience in a managed, controlled environment. The best part was when people checked in where they were watching from. We had people from NY to Hawaii, IL, MN, FL, and even a viewer from Costa Rica so the show was officially international.

The main problems were with the presentation. We did 3 sound checks over the course of a week and there were still some small issues. In the beginning, Faith asked if everyone could see and hear ok and only one person mentioned that it was too soft. That could mean pretty much anything. I thought our levels were good and didn't want to make any changes unless more people chimed in. I simply asked her to turn up her computer's speakers.

A couple of people had problems with the chat feature. Support said that it could be due to their having an old browser. When you have a slew of people watching with totally different platforms, you're going to have technical difficulty. Overall, I thought the success rate was high enough that I'd give Stageit a 8.5 out of 10.

Finally, the money . . .

The documentation is a little misleading about how much the artist makes. “85% of all tickets & tips after expenses. . . under no circumstances will expenses associated with shows ever exceed 25% of the total proceeds from any performance”. Our net was actually 60%, so the total charge was over 25% of total proceeds.

After inquiring, here was their response:

Payments - Our numbers as stated in the Terms and Broadcaster Agreements are accurate albeit confusing due to the legalese presentation. The basic presentation is 60%/40% - 60% to the Performer, roughly 25% goes to Fees, roughly 15% goes to Stageit. (Fees as detailed in the Terms and Broadcaster Agreement are credit card transactions, bandwidth, support and PRO payments) This is just slightly off the numbers Apple-iTunes pays for merely holding onto the same file for every, but still keeping 30%.

So you'll just have to go in with the understanding that you're getting a 60/40 split.

Hope this helps. If anything, I'd recommend doing a sound check or two and getting it to a point where the lowest common denominator will have a good experience.

[DaNolman]

PS - now I'm going to try to do a cashout. Tell you how that works in a few days!

[Ellwood]

This looks interesting! I wonder how you configure your live sound for broadcast? I mean how would your live sound engineer interface with the Stagit staff or hardware to insure a good quality stereo representation to the listeners? is latency a problem at all? is the band width on the imput end of the show critical? are multiple live cameras possible? and how would they interface to the live site video engineer? I have done live shows that were taped with multiple cams and it took quite a effort by the on site producer/director production staff to keep que's in order in real time.