through the global coronavirus pandemic:
the shaky first livestream.
Nearly 10,000 fans watched her 30-minute
performance on Pitchfork’s Instagram free.
“I’ve never played a show to 10,000 people
before, but it’s hard to feel like that’s happen-
ing when you’re alone in your house and
there isn’t crowd response,” Bridgers said
during a phone interview in late May.
“You’re like: ‘I feel like an idiot. I’m just play-
ing in my house, talking to myself.’ It’s very
weird.”
It’s a weirdness artists and fans have be-
come intimately familiar with. Since the con-
cert industry shut down in mid-March, the
livestream has become ubiquitous. Diplo
performed from his dimly lit living room
floor. John Legend took requests on Insta-
gram Live in his bathrobe. Keith Urban
played in his warehouse with his wife, Nicole
Kidman, dancing in and out of the frame.
The format has evolved quickly and some-
what haphazardly, but, generally, there’s
been an observable developmental timeline.
At first, the streams were mostly free — with
the main goal simply to ease both artists’
and fans’ nerves — or they were for charity,
soliciting tips to raise money for aid groups.
After a few weeks of streams with rudi-
mentary production values, they got more
ambitious, and some were embellished with
better lighting and multiple camera angles.
Though artists initially gravitated toward
familiar social media platforms like
YouTube, Instagram Live or Facebook Live,
they soon started making the leap to online
stages fans may not have heard of before.
Some, like Erykah Badu, started building
their own platforms. Venues started hosting
livestreams, and media organizations like
Billboard, NPR and Pitchfork got in on the
act. Even retailers Urban Outfitters and
Navy Exchange started doing them.
As the pandemic has stretched on, and it’s
become clear that concerts full of tightly
packed fans won’t be returning in a signifi-
cant way until 2021, there’s new pressure on
these streams, and new questions about
them: Can the technology be improved? Can
the streams edge closer to the experience of
a real show — with fans interacting with
each other, paying for better views or more
access? Can artists adjust to playing to a
screen, rather than a crowd of screaming
fans?
And, perhaps most critically: Will people
pay for them?WHEN THE PANDEMICfirst hit, companies al-
ready working to make livestreams more
polished had largely struggled to gain trac-
tion. The shutdown of the concert industry
changed that. Stageit, a livestreaming plat-
form begun in 2011, saw such a surge afterthe coronavirus lockdown that its payment
processors initially suspected fraud.
“We were doing numbers in days that we
were doing in months before,” said Stageit’s
founder, Evan Lowenstein.
Topeka, a company that charges fans for
bespoke mini-concerts, Q. and A. sessions
and other encounters via Zoom calls (with
artists like Joshua Radin and the Indigo
Girls’ Emily Saliers), started in December.
“Our biggest issue then was how are we go-
ing to tell people what Zoom is,” said Tope-
ka’s founder, Andy Levine.
Since mid-March, the company has ex-
panded from one employee to 10. On July 7,
Topeka livestreamed a “front row experi-
ence” for a Jason Isbell show, during which
150 fans paid $100 per stream to see and be
seen by Isbell, mimicking some of the inter-
active qualities of a real concert. The event
was recorded and was offered later to more
than 2,000 fans at $25 a ticket on July 23.
“This is a first step for us to figure out a way
for the artist to feel energy coming back, and
for people watching to feel it,” Levine said.
The rapid expansion and experimentation
can make the livestreaming landscape feel a
bit like the Wild West. Livestreaming has be-
come a catchall designation that refers to a
dizzying array of content: solo home videos;
concerts staged in empty venues; Insta-
gram series like Verzuz, where artists alter-
nate spinning their own tracks in back-and-
forth battles; free-form Zoom calls with
fans; D.J.s on turntables; performances in
video games like Minecraft and Fortnite;
and immersive experiences powered by vir-
tual reality technology.
The experience for performers can be dis-
orienting. “The Pavlovian response for the
past 23 years is you finish a song and what-
ever number of people are in the room clap
for you,” said Ben Gibbard, the Death Cab for
Cutie frontman, who livestreamed from his
home regularly from mid-March through
May. “I’ve gotten used to that being the vali-
dation.”
Efforts to take advantage of technology
that artists themselves may not be entirely
comfortable with can be predictably hit-and-
miss. The veteran R&B producer Teddy Ri-
ley did his first livestream in early April from
his home studio, along with members of his
group, Blackstreet. A local company set up
multiple cameras, and the show was
streamed over several platforms including
Omnis, Vuuzle and Pluto TV. But despite the
generally crisp quality of the stream, Riley
felt a disconnect.
“When you go, ‘Say ho!’ and you’re trying
to get crowd participation, you’re just hoping
that somebody is in their home saying,
‘Ho!’ ” he said.
Artists have often found themselves grop-ing toward a simulacrum of their normal
concert experience. Brad Paisley’s first
livestream on March 19 was self-shot to In-
stagram Live, but since then, the multiplat-
inum country star has performed with band-
mates, all socially distanced at his home;
he’s done Zoom calls with fans; and in May,
he performed his full stage show at the Steel
Mill, a rehearsal space outside Nashville.
“The house concerts were charming but
odd,” said Paisley. “There’s my dad with one
iPad and my wife with another, staring at me.
She’s wincing as I have an awkward mo-
ment.”
It took three days for Paisley’s mask-and-
glove-clad crew to set up the Steel Mill stage,
a process that normally takes six hours. “It
was like doing calculus,” he said. “If we got
this wrong and there were 50 new Covid
cases due to our negligence, that’d be it for
these.”PRE-PANDEMIC, LIVE MUSICwas one of the
industry’s few financially robust sectors, so
its disappearance has been crippling. Ac-
cording to one poll, 90 percent of independ-
ent venue owners predict they’ll have to shut
down completely by the fall without a federal
bailout or some other income source. In
April, Pollstar estimated that worldwide
ticket revenue would tumble by about 75 per-
cent, or $8.9 billion if concerts didn’t return
in 2020.
Whether livestreams can spawn a reliable
business model to help replace this revenue
— for artists and for the industry — may be
the most difficult question to answer. The
country’s largest concert promoter, Live Na-
tion, which furloughed 20 percent of its staff
as part of a $600 million cost-cutting effort,
has been aggregating artists’ free
livestreams on its website, and planning for
more highly produced fan-less concerts that
could generate revenue through advertising
or ticket sales. But expectations are modest.
“We’re never going to replace, through
digital, the emotional connection an artist
has with their fans,” said Kevin Chernett,
Live Nation’s executive video president of
global partnerships and content distribu-
tion. “I don’t think we’re going to replace all
the touring revenue. But we’re certainly
willing to find out a tolerance level and
interest from fans to see where it goes.”
Many in the industry have worked,
quite sensibly, on establishing a decent
livestreaming product before asking
fans to pay for it. For Digital Mirage, a
virtual electronic music festival first
held in early April, the performers
played for free, while viewer donations
raised $300,000 for the Sweet Relief Musi-
cians Fund. The festival’s second run, in
mid-June, was also a free livestream thatraised money for social justice causes
through a virtual tip jar. According to Blake
Coppelson, one of Digital Mirage’s organ-
izers, for the festival’s next iteration, “we can
potentially charge.”
But as the music industry has learned,
persuading consumers to pay for something
they’ve previously gotten for free can be
challenging. Ben Baruch, who runs the
11E1even Group, a company that represents
jam bands, began organizing Live from Out
There — a recurring virtual festival — days
after the nationwide lockdown went into ef-
fect. “We needed a system to put money in
everybody’s pocket versus go free and then
try to work backwards,” he said.
Using multiple paid ticketing and sub-
scription options, the festival, which ran
across 10 weekends between mid-March and
early June, grossed more than $700,000.
“We did see scenarios where people actually
made more money than they might’ve on
tour.”
Other livestreaming platforms have seen
similarly impressive returns. According to
Levine, one artist made close to $25,000 on
Topeka, putting in about 10 hours a week for
six weeks in April and May. “This is no pay-
ing your band, no overhead and you get to
stay in your own bed,” Levine said.
But artists who normally make their living
on the road may face bigger obstacles in this
new abnormal.
“A rock band with a slightly older audi-
ence, those audiences are less rabid from an
online engagement perspective,” said Steve
Bursky, the founder of Foundations Music, a
management company whose clients in-
clude Foy Vance, Young the Giant and Lauv.FINDING THE SWEET SPOTbetween what
fans are willing to pay and what artists need
to charge to make it profitable continues to
be tricky. The veteran rapper Murs has been
livestreaming for years, mostly via the gam-
ing platform Twitch, but admitted that it has
been “a grind” despite the post-lockdown up-
tick. He’s on Twitch for two hours a day, six
days a week, mostly freestyling. He’s also
been doing periodic concerts from home for
subscribers to his account on Patreon, a plat-
form for fans to directly pay content cre-
ators.
Still, his livestreaming income hasn’t ap-
proached what he’d make on the road.
“If I had to depend on Twitch and Patreon,
I’d be lost right now,” he said. Watching his
fellow rappers livestream for free though is
frustrating. “Most rappers aren’t looking for
ways to connect to fans or monetize, they’re
just starved for attention, so something like
IG Live works for them. I love Verzuz, but
why aren’t you all on Twitch trying to mone-
tize this? You’re giving Instagram every-
thing for free.”
Stageit’s Lowenstein, a singer-songwriter
himself, has been evangelical about musi-
cians not giving away content. “I’m con-
cerned about what that does to artists that
really need the money,” he said.
The tension is difficult to resolve. The art-
ists livestreaming for free or shaking a tip jar
for charity are often the ones who can afford
to, and who feel, justifiably, that charging
fans money during these times feels bad and
looks worse. At the same time, all these
livestreams are competing for viewers’ lim-
ited time, so a high-profile artist offering free
content deflates the market for anyone else
hoping — and needing — to make money.
In mid-March, Rhett Miller, the 49-year-
old frontman for the alt-country outfit the
Old 97s, began regularly livestreaming
shows via Stageit from his home office in
New Paltz, N.Y. Fans pay what they want —
the suggested price is $9.70 per show — and
he gives some proceeds to charity but can’t
afford to give it all.
“When I was looking at a year-plus of no
income, it was terrifying,” he said. “I thought
this thing I’ve been doing for 35 years was
over. I was convinced I was going to have to
figure out a new job.”
Going forward, the recognition that
livestreams can be more than just poorly
produced home gigs feels significant. “If you
just play shows and charge, I think the nov-
elty will wear off,” said Jonathan Daniel, the
co-owner of Crush, a management company
that represents Green Day, Weezer and Sia.
“Figuring out what the medium works for is
key. It’s a good creative lesson.”
The English singer-songwriter Laura
Marling sold 5,500 tickets to two livestreams
in June from Union Chapel, a grand 19th-
century London cathedral. The shows were
geo-blocked, meaning one was available
only to British-based fans, the other to those
in North America. Ticket sales were capped
to help stir demand. The resulting revenue
won’t cover all of Marling’s canceled shows,
but that was never the point.
“The shows are just an experimental nov-
elty,” she said. “Somebody will figure out a
way to make them not just a novelty in the
future. But right now, that’s all they are.”
Other artists have started to create entire
virtual tours, with each show geo-blocked
and therefore available for streaming only to
fans in a particular city or region. DICE, the
digital ticketing company Marling used, is
working on software that will enable friends
to buy tickets to a livestream together and
have their own private chat room at the
show. “For fans in different places across the
globe to be able to unite at any show and
have that interaction, that’s amazing,” said
Marling.
In July, Rave Family Block Fest, a four-
day electronic music festival featuring more
than 900 artists took place inside Minecraft,
with ticket prices starting at $10. A company
called Wave, which uses motion-capture
technology to turn artists into digital avatars
and stage virtual concerts, recently raised
$30 million in venture capital funding.
Some of these ideas will flourish. Oth-
ers won’t. But for all the frustration, ter-
ror and boredom the pandemic has
stoked, “I haven’t hated some of the
creativity it’s caused,” as Paisley put it.
Livestreaming may be an inelegant,
unsatisfying remedy for live music’s
absence, but there’s widespread ac-
knowledgment that, for now, it’s what
we’ve got. “I feel for this industry be-
cause we’ve got to limp to the finish here,”
he said. “The problem is we don’t know
when the finish is.”Above, with no firm
return date for live,
in-person concerts,
there are few souvenir
tour T-shirts. Below,
Phoebe Bridgers played
her first livestream of
the pandemic in April,
for Pitchfork.OUT OF OFFICEDollars in the Stream
By DAVID PEISNER
On April 10, Phoebe Bridgers sat in her Los Angeles apartment in her pajamas, with a guitar
across her lap and her head cocked quizzically to the side, staring into her phone’s camera. “I’ve
never done this before,” the 25-year-old singer-songwriter said, strumming her Danelectro.
“How are you guys? Is this, like, a normal angle? Is this good? Can you hear me?” ¶ And with
that, Bridgers embarked upon what has become practically a rite of passage for musicians living
Music fans have
gotten used to free
shows during the
pandemic, but
now the industry
is trying to find
the sweet spot for
getting customers
to pay.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020 AR 9Pop
LIVESTREAMING IN 2020