How can I put my gigs online?

Aug 17, 2008

When I get asked this question, it’s usually by young bands who have developed something of a following through touring, by being really active with their online promotion (typically via MySpace) and by keeping and maintaining a healthy and regular online mailing list.

Their idea is that they would like to perform concerts that fans in other geographic locations could ‘attend’ by going to their website and watching a live webcast of the event. Their second choice is usually to record the concert and post it on YouTube (or similar) and embed it on their site.

Now, it has to be said that live streaming is generally expensive, resource intensive and a bit of a pain – especially if you want more than a few people to watch at once. There are solutions to that, which I’ll discuss – but it’s worth mentioning that there are all sorts of other variations on the theme.

When I talk to my students about gigs, I get them to consider them as three parts of the same whole: Before, During and After. Each is an important part of the gig, and each has its own tasks, responsibilities and (naturally) technological tools that can be leveraged to the benefit of the enterprise.

And there are very sensible reasons to put all three aspects online in one way or another.

Before
Putting the gig promotion online is a bit of a no-brainer. But organising aspects of the event can be done online as well. If it’s something that’s going to take a bit of coordination, you might want to use some online planning tools like Zoho Project or Basecamp in order to bring together diverse people to perform in a joined-up way.

During
The best online tool for streaming your concerts live on the internet is Synchronicity Live. They do all the tricky stuff – you just need a camera, an internet connection, and something interesting happening on stage. Take a feed off the desk to get decent sound. You’ll feel better about the results afterwards.

But there’s more that you can do for your internet while the concert’s happening. Take photographs for the website (yes, from the stage – yes, of your audience). Get your team out in the audience collecting audio feedback, email addresses, etc.

Perform a live ‘ringtone’ and record it to sell or give away on your site. I borrowed that idea off a young punk band who do a 30 second thrash every time they play live that pretty much goes “PICK UP YOUR PHONE!!! PICK UP YOUR PHONE!!! (repeat)” – but they change something (eg inserting the name of the town) every time they do it.

After
Write up the concert. Blog your thoughts about it. Post photographs. Get out a video camera once the band comes off stage and record your thoughts about it – what were the highlights? What do you wish you’d done better? Who was cute in the audience? All that stuff…

And for goodness sake, if you took email addresses for the mailing list, sit down and type a short thankyou email to everyone who attended. Just to them. Give them the website address. Let them know you appreciated them being there, before you add them to the general mailing list that signed up for.

So yeah – put your concert online by all means. And do it in as many ways as you can think of that will be helpful to you and appreciated by your audience.

As many of my readers have pointed out time and again – there’s nothing like the experience of live music, and this can’t be replicated online. I’d add to that the idea that there’s nothing like the online experience to give people a taste of the live event, to reinforce their enjoyment of it, and to fire up their thirst for it.

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8 Comments. Write a comment or link to this post

Atul Rana

That’s pretty useful advice and I think more importantly this touches on the issue of promotion via videos and youtube. And this can be done by pretty much any band at any level if they are smart enough with their marketing and promotion. And the performance doesen’t even have to be a truly live webcast.

We’ve set up our own youtube minisite where we post up live videos of our performances from our residency venue. The guy films and records the video for meagre £15 and all we have to do is put it up on our youtube. Now my friends in Brazil can know what we look and sound like on stage without even flying to London, result!

Atul
http://www.youtube.com/donkeyboxrocks

Aug 17th, 2008
Scott Bramley

I streamed one of my gigs this week. The venue that I was performing at (The Sands Venue, Gainsborough) have recently started to offer this to its bands on a pay per view basis (£2 per stream) and I jumped at the chance to give it a try. I haven’t seen it myself yet but had good feedback from some of those that tuned in, as far afield as New Jersey! I think it’s going to be available to play again this week on their website (www.the-sands.co.uk/streaming) so I’ll be able to take a look for myself.

Some great ideas you’ve put forward regarding live ringtones etc. I didn’t do that this time, but I’ll give it a try for the next and maybe try to stream something myself. Great blog by the way!

Scott Bramley
http://www.scottbramley.co.uk

Aug 17th, 2008
Jonny

There is a bar near me who refurbished and set up a stage with the idea of broadcasting shows live online.

I played there a couple of years ago and they filmed the stage and showed it on screens around the bar. They didn’t seem to broadcast at that point but they seem to have it up and running just now.

You can see it here:

http://www.box-glasgow.co.uk/webcast/index.html

I suppose it’s a good idea but I’m not sure what the sound quality is like and I don’t think people are that interested it other than it being a novelty.

Aug 18th, 2008
I Have Clones

I don’t really think you need to be able to stream your gig ‘live’, but it’s far more important to get a decent quality recording of a live performance that you can then embed on your site which is then viewable whenever a fan wishes.

This is great in making your site content rich and also can help bring people to gigs, as they already know that you (hopefully) don’t suck live and know they are getting a good show for their money.

The experience can be better if there is more than one camera filming the performance and you can then edit these together to make it more exciting to watch than one static shot from the back of the venue. You should also aim to get a good audio recording through the PA and not from the camera mic as it will most likely get distorted and your performance sound like a mush.

I think you should get some audience shots in there – showing the audience having a good time, and you should also position a mic to capture audience reaction.

Problems are – finding people with cameras – or buying your own – they are fairly pricey!

Also, beware of venues offering to film you and charge you for it – an absolute rip off from what I have seen – so DIY!

Aug 18th, 2008
James Pew

Many of the live video clips I see of bands are of such poor quality that I think they do more harm than good. But if the audio/video a has little production value than I agree with every word Andrew says.

If you are able to bring (rent) a multi-track recording device I would highly recommend taking direct outs from each channel on the mixing console. Then you can take the audio footage to your home studio or a commercial studio and give it a proper mix.

I also like I Have Clones idea about multiple camera angles. But if I had to choose between multiple cameras and direct outs allowing capture of each mic…I’d go with the direct outs.

Aug 18th, 2008
JP

Given the title “How can I put my gigs online?”, I was expecting more discussion along the lines of the “how” and not so much the “why”. ie:

— more suggestions for online resources for webcasting for musicians.
— tips on presentation or publicity for attracting visitors to a live webcast vs. embedded.
— Is there any way to make money off a live webcast?? (or is this another “give it away for free so you can sell T-shirts” approach?)

Just some feedback. The email list, post-show blog write-up, live ringtone etc. is all good advice (if not covered already), but a bit off-topic.

Aug 18th, 2008
GigDoggy

By ‘putting your gigs online, I think Andrew meant put as much of your online as possible, hence all the post-work features such as pictures, blogging, ringtones and so on.

But to answer the ‘how’ question extensively would be interesting. I didn’t know SyncLive before reading this post and it’s by far the best solution for the moment, that I know of at least.

That site rocks in many respects. Concerning having filmed videos of your bands, you stand a better chance at getting noticed if they are of good quality, but I dont think It will take you down a notch to post less-quality content, unless of course it’s inaudible and picture is so bad you cant tell the difference between a man or a woman on stage.

Bands have only started to massively film their concerts no so long ago so the standards for quality aren’t that high yet. Meaning that having any kind of filmed signature is a good idea, mostly if you plan on gig swapping with out of town bands and depend on an online-effort to network.

Aug 19th, 2008
Miguel M.

There is a company called discrevolt.com that records a live show and sells a download card to the fans at the show that they can redeem when they get home (they call it a “livepass”). I saw a Jason Aldean concert in Bristol, TN a few months ago and they were there. The show rocked, so I had to experiment with this concept I had never heard of (well, except for a few acts I have seen over the years that tried to burn CDs after the show and sell them to fans). I bought the card for $15 (not bad, in my opinion since I was at THAT SHOW!) and downloaded the concert when I got home from Jason Aldean’s website.

On his site today, I saw that he is still offering the download cards through his online store. Don’t know what relevance this has to artists that perform for smaller crowds, but I would probably buy one of these at every show I go to if it rocks.

Aug 23rd, 2008