How Livestreaming Is Bridging the Gap Between Bands and Fans During the Coronavirus Outbreak

Last Saturday, I went to my first metalcore show. It was everything I expected it to be, with seizure-inducing strobe lights flashing in the background, long-haired dudes headbanging onstage, and thousands of fans alongside me passionately emoting throughout the entire set. But this show wasn’t like most others I had experienced before: Instead of getting my eardrums blown out in a sweaty club, I was sitting in my living room, staring at a 12-inch laptop screen.

The concert was Code Orange’s release show for their latest album, Underneath. In the wake of ongoing coronavirus-related concerns, the Pittsburgh band decided to broadcast their scheduled hometown gig for fans on the livestreaming platform Twitch instead of performing to an in-person audience. I couldn’t actually see any of the fans who were also tuned in but, thanks to the constant stream of emojis filling up the stream’s chat forum, I could definitely feel their presence.

There’s nothing quite like the tribal experience of going out to a venue and singing your favorite song alongside thousands of strangers. But as the COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread globally, it will quickly become more common for music fans around the world to stay in for shows. In a matter of weeks, the global concert industry has all but come to a standstill, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of ticket-sales losses. The world’s two largest concert promoters, Live Nation and AEG, have recommended postponing all U.S. tours at least until the end of March, while many music festivals have been cancelled or postponed. And just yesterday, President Trump issued new guidelines that included avoiding gatherings of more than 10 people—a threshold that takes almost every kind of traditional concert off the table.

The effect of these losses on artists, promoters, and other behind-the-scenes industry workers who rely more than ever on touring to make ends meet isn’t just financial; concerts are also highly emotional, often cathartic experiences that are essential for strengthening the bonds between artists and their fans.

Livestreaming is the closest digital analog to an in-person show, and now artists of all sizes are racing to organize virtual events for their fans. At 4 p.m. EST today (March 17), for instance, John Legend will perform a set on his Instagram Live, and a new electronic music collective NeuroDungeon will host a virtual party on Twitch and in the avatar-chat app Club Cooee. In response to Spain’s current lockdown, the Cuarentena Fest is featuring more than 50 artists and bands livestreaming performances from their homes on YouTube through March 27. Other artists like British punk singer-songwriter Frank Turner, Miami dance duo Afrobeta, and Houston rapper Fat Tony are also streaming their own shows on platforms like YouTube and Facebook throughout the week. The deluge of activity has even inspired several attempts at making curated, virtual event listings for fans to sift through.

The normalization of livestreaming could be game-changing for the music business. One of brick-and-mortar touring’s biggest challenges is that, by nature, it’s difficult to scale. And unlike passive income streams such as music sales and streaming, the only way for artists to make money touring is by doing more work. The lifestyle that results—endless days and nights in planes, tour buses, and hotel rooms—can end up feeling unsustainable for many artists, let alone for the planet.

In contrast, livestreaming has the potential to scale concerts to the same level as recorded music: The biggest artists can reach hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of viewers around the world with a single show. It’s also much easier for fans to jump from one show to the next in a virtual environment and to build their own self-directed “lineups” in a given day or week based on their own interests.

Music is closely tied to the history of livestreaming. The world’s first internet livestreams took place in the mid ’90s and featured glitchy performances from indie bands Severe Tire Damage, Sky Cries Mary, and Deth Specula. In November 1994, the Rolling Stones became the first major group to livestream when they broadcast 20 minutes of a Dallas show over an internet service called M-Bone. Today’s most popular livestreaming options all gained their footing within the last decade: Twitch and YouTube Live launched in 2011, followed by Periscope and Facebook Live in 2015, and Instagram Live in 2016.

At this point, livestreaming in the music industry typically serves one of two primary functions: Increasing the accessibility and reach of a major festival to a wider online audience (Coachella’s livestream collected 82 million views during its first weekend last year), and connecting artists directly with fans through more casual, but often news-breaking, Q&A-type experiences (Megan Thee Stallion recently dished about her contract woes with her label 1501 Certified Entertainment on Instagram Live). The technology has also been at the forefront of several cutting-edge innovations around virtual music experiences, such as Marshmello’s DJ set in Fortnite, Minecraft’s expanding suite of in-game electronic festivals, and tech company TheWaveXR’s VR-friendly shows featuring avatars of artists like Tinashe.

Historically, though, livestreaming was never intended to replace actual concerts, financially or emotionally. Instead, it served as a low-stakes, supplemental tool for increasing fan engagement and reach. But for the next few months, at least, with the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc across the globe, the technology is one of the most practical paths forward for performing artists and fans—even though it may be challenging to monetize.

Building out a compelling livestreaming experience isn’t necessarily just about making an online carbon copy of a brick-and-mortar concert. “DJing for a sweaty club is different from playing music for people spread out over the world in their rooms,” music-marketing strategist Bas Grasmayer, who has been hosting a series of “cyber raves” online in the past week, recently wrote. “The goal is not to replicate the activity, but to recreate the emotions people feel when they go out.”

Recreating such emotions in livestreaming requires taking advantage of the medium, which often means getting rid of the superfluous spectacle you might otherwise see in normal stage setups. From the fan’s perspective, the “stage” in a livestream is just the screen, and the audience is the chat room. There’s a diminished sense of hierarchy between artist and the fan, leading to interactions that can be much more social, interactive, and intimate.

The artists who are most successful with livestreaming technology use it often, and in disarmingly informal ways. Singer-songwriter Clare Means spent over a year livestreaming her busking on Periscope, and at one point made $1,400 in digital tips from just one hour of performing. UK-based artist Emma McGann makes around 90 percent of her income from livestreaming performances several times a week on a platform called YouNow, where fans can either subscribe directly to her channel or pay her tips in real time. Many indie electronic artists like HANA and JVNA have been livestreaming on Twitch at least once a week for several months now, answering questions from fans and lifting the veil on their recording processes.

But business models remain a challenge for this burgeoning livestreaming ecosystem. Everyday consumers aren’t used to paying for musical livestreams, and a lot of recent virtual concerts have depended on viewer donations to make ends meet. But musicians can’t live on a donation model forever. And even if you wanted to paywall your livestream, there are only a handful of platforms with that functionality—including Crowdcast, Moment House, and Key—most of which are invite-only or have yet to be tested on a larger scale. The reality is that the vast majority of artists, as well as the concert-industry workers around them, won’t recover their losses via livestreaming alone, unless they commit to the technology long-term.

Such a shift would force the music industry to reconsider the entire value proposition of the live performance. Whereas tours once served as loss-leading advertisements for more lucrative album sales, nowadays it’s the other way around, thanks to the low margins of streaming economics. But in an environment where artists may no longer be able to depend on touring, and where the business models around livestreaming have yet to be proven, virtual shows can at least provide a social space for fans and artists to offer each other emotional solace through music and conversation—all without leaving the house.

Originally Appeared on Pitchfork