Have you ever seen those live recordings of concerts, where an amazing crew spend a lot of time figuring out angles and perspectives, have a number of camera men ready to film and maybe even hired a drone to get some fantastic air shots? And then you see all those phones shining in the crowd, people wanting to capture these moments forever.
We have been lucky to have worked with some great artists over the years and have seen the footage of their live shows. Many performers bring out a DVD or do a livestream for their fans to enjoy. But these productions can easily be ignored amongst the clips of fans filming their favourite musicians uploaded to YouTube.
Going through clip after clip, one can be surprised how many people enjoy a concert through the screen of their phone. And then upload it online. Facebook and YouTube are flooded by great evenings and events. The need that people have to share their precious moments is undeniably strong. But as an artist or event host, what can you do about this?
A few days ago, we were invited as a selected few business partners to the closed premiere of David Gilmour’s upcoming DVD release of “Live at Pompeii”. As we were watching the amazing performance at Pompeii on a big screen, it was quite obvious to the audience in the room that a good portion of fans were using their phones at the live event to take pictures, video, record or livestream the event to share with their friends on social media.
So you as an artist may be concerned about this sort of uncontrollable amount of online streaming content which is difficult to tackle. But there are ways to protect the copyrights and ownership rights even during live events. Firstly, there is the option to block this content. Often done on YouTube, videos will then not be visible any more. They simply disappear. This can also be done on Facebook where Facebook Rights Manager offers the option to block content as well. We did all of this work for David Gilmour during all of his recent live concerts and we’ve seen an excellent response from the results.
Another way to get fans involved that aren’t able to attend the concert is to do a livestream of the concert. You can make the livestream available for free or make the livestream available as a pay per view event.
Charging for a livestream event allows you to not only sell tickets for the performance but to also make money online. This allows you to increase your revenue, while also taking control of content and appeasing fans and allowing them to share their enthusiasm online.
Regardless of wherever your concert takes place, in a club, an outdoor arena or in your bedroom, you should always have options to be able to protect and monetize the event in the best way possible for your pocket.
If you want to find out more about protecting your live event, please do get in touch.