✖ Emerging artists and a livestream strategy
✖ Emerging artists and a livestream strategy
And: OnlyFans isn't just porn; Gen Z to learn new skills with Billie Eilish; Roblox & music; Eurovision & Covid; Techstars Demo Day; Autonomous robot artists
I updated my waterfall strategy for livestreaming on Water & Music with a focus on emerging artists. I try to explain that you don’t need big budgets to pull off a strategy where you see your livestream end up in various different formats on a variety of platforms. The idea is to invest a little bit more money in one livestream to get higher production values and a longer waterfall of engagement and revenues from your video. Two examples I’d like to share here:
BIRD Rotterdam, Oligar da Paz
BIRD is a venue in Rotterdam focused on jazz and hip hop. Years ago they had the idea to start BIRDtv, a short TV-style format of around 15 minutes that showcased the music performed on stage, the feeling of the crowd and a little interview with the artist. Production was in the hands of Oligar da Paz. A personal favorite is the episode with Shayna Steele
Full concerts were also recorded, and all this on budgets that did not exceed a couple of thousand Euros. The focus for this article is on video, but as this video shows, good sound is just as important. Of course, it helps when there’s a good working relationship between the various parties involved. There are, for example, venues that charge media fees when you want to record. When it comes to rights, it’s important to retain ownership as the artist. At the same time, you may want to reconsider playing that cover you always perform if you want to make the full video available on-demand somewhere. What the example of BIRDtv shows is that a concert can be much more than just showing a performance on stage.
Klangmalerei.tv, from livestream to EPK
Being from Germany puts Klangmalerei.tv (Klangmalerei translates as soundpainting) in a different media landscape than in many other countries. Germany has a strong public broadcasting system in place where capturing music on video is still heavily subsidized and shown on TV. There are, then, many more traditional producers in Germany used to working with broadcasters such as the ZDF or ARTE and the accompanying big budgets. Where Klangmalerei.tv stands out is in how they work with artists and offer a waterfall strategy in their own way in most of their production work. For example, they worked with the label Berlin Classics and the string quartet Schuman Quartett on some video work. This resulted in a music video, a trailer for their record Chiaroscuro, a variety of clips for their social media and various edits for their EPK.
The most expensive part of the work involved in this sits in the post-production phase. The more hours the producer has to spend editing the more costly it gets. That said a rough estimate for the type of production suggested here sits around $6000.
Both of these examples don’t take a livestream as their starting point, but showcase what you can do with a well-produced video on a budget. The full article is behind a paywall.
TECH
😳 OnlyFans Isn’t Just Porn ;) (NYT)
Though OnlyFans’ representatives seem to distance the site from its sexual content, the platform is synonymous with porn. Its naughty cachet attracts celebrities ... When Cardi B joined last August, she made headlines. (“No, I’m not going to be showing my titties,” she warned, but she did promise behind-the-scenes content from her risqué “WAP” music video with Megan Thee Stallion.) Celebrities use the site because they know that regardless of a creator’s stated career (chef, fitness trainer and influencer are popular), OnlyFans’ draw is the promise of seeing that which is normally unseen. Plenty of bios warn subscribers that the attached account is non-explicit yet pepper in teasing cues to the contrary.
⭐ Rolling Stone x Techstars Music Accelerator Demo Day (Twitch)
My favorites are:
Fave, on co-creating with and competition between fans
Music Tech Works, on simplifying music licensing search queries (and allowing anyone to see who the songwriters are)
Westcott Multimedia, which is like an automated content calendar that actually publishes and plays into spikes of activity around catalog
🥁 Investor Li Jin says we’ll all be creators in 10 years (The Information)
“Everything will have a creator component to the job,” Jin, 30, said. “Everyone will have to build influence online, because we’re living more of our lives online … All of us will have to adopt some of the skill sets and behaviors of creators in order to be successful.”
“[W]e explore the traditional function of a record label by automatically distributing and promoting the music and image of our artist prototypes. In this process we collect a wide range of technologies that will bring us closer to our dream: to develop one integrated system that can create fully autonomous robot artists.”
🧱 Two interesting pieces about Roblox:
“I think that the learnings from events like the Lil Nas X performance are really exciting. We think about live generationally; [for] a lot of the kids who experienced Lil Nas X, [it] wasn't just their first virtual concert, it was their first concert ever, which is kind of mad when that really sinks in. My first concert was Genesis at Wembley, many years ago, right? You always remember your first concert. For this generation, their first experience of even what a live experience is, with their friends, was virtual.”
Jon Vlassopulos, Global head of music, Roblox
How Roblox sparked a chaotic music scene (NYT)
While the platform’s makers praised how music has become one of its hallmarks — “the fact that Roblox is spawning a new music subgenre speaks to Roblox’s current generational and cultural ubiquity,” wrote Jon Vlassopulos, its global head of music, in an email — in actuality, many of its young users are doing things that are supposed to be forbidden, like hacking illicit music into the game.
📍 Pinterest introduces Idea Pins, a video-first feature aimed at creators (TechCrunch)
Pinterest is also working with the royalty-free music database Epidemic Sound to offer a catalog of free tracks for use in Idea Pins.
X
🪞 Billie Eilish and Deutsche Telekom join forces to support the future of Gen Z (Music Week)
Gen Z and professional skills employability experts developed the campaign, which has been endorsed by Eilish. It will see young people have access to a support platform to help guide them in their future careers and learn new skills.
👩🎤 ‘10,000 singing football fans, but only 6 in a choir?’ – amateur choirs react to COVID rules (ClassicFM)
🖖 Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello share journey to mindfulness with Calm audio series (Billboard)
The couple announced on Monday (May 17) “Breathe Into It,” their first audio series and wellness hub exclusively on Calm. The series includes 13 sessions from Cabello and 11 sessions from Mendes, chronicling their personal experiences overcoming fear, coping with anxiety, practicing gratitude, building self-love, staying mindful and more.
🧪 Nine people tested positive for Covid at Eurovision so far, most personnel (NL Times)
Out of some 20,000 coronavirus tests that were taken among the staff, journalists and participants of the Eurovision Song Contest, ten turned out to be positive including one person who tested positive twice. Infections most commonly occurred with personnel of the Ahoy Rotterdam venue which is hosting Europe’s largest music competition this week.
MUSIC
I often hear people being dismissive of modern, 20th Century, classical music. And I have to agree that it’s difficult to listen to some of the music created by the likes of Schönberg and Stockhausen. But there’s also a lot of accessible work out there. This is my introduction to modern classical music.