Evolutions in Live Streaming Entertainment – From Mainstream Artists to Concerts from Home Studios

As a $50B global industry, music has historically relied on two main revenue streams – live in-person performance and recorded music. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, the soul of the music industry – live touring – quickly came to a halt.  For recorded music, streaming had already grown from generating 9% to 47% of revenues over the prior 6 years. In 2020 and into 2021, it assumed a new role in experiments to replace some of the lost concert experience – both in terms of connection with fans and generation of revenues.

Artists searched for new ways to connect directly with fans by streaming performances from their own homes and small venues using Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube – to engaging in increasingly sophisticated and experimental productions using platforms such as Twitch and Fortnite, or even their own team of white hat hackers. Twitch’s Music and Performing Arts category quadrupled in viewership hours in 2020.

Major Artists’ Streaming Experiments

The stakes quickly grew as both artists and platforms searched for the Holy Grail that would combine the intimacy of a social performance with major tour production values, along with a surprising twist that only virtual could provide.

·      Dua Lipa’s Studio 2054 show pulled in more than 5 million views.

·      Fortnite’s Travis Scott concert of 10 minutes drew 30 million live simultaneous viewers, and the YouTube recording has over 140 million views.

·      Artists such as Sheila E organized live benefit performances from their favorite small venues, inviting other artists to join in person or remotely from around the world. 

·      Erykah Badu experimented with building a new streaming platform with her 3 concert Apocalypse series that aired live through Badu World Market as opposed to Instagram or YouTube.  

These and hundreds of other online performances were the result of intense pressure to rapidly experiment.  As Badu said about her experience: “I’m building a new machine. I may face a few obstacles.

Emerging Artists Face the Technology Challenge on Their Own

Beyond the superstar performers who had fame and large followings before the pandemic, ‘facing obstacles’ has been a common theme for smaller emerging artists – who on their own are building technology and creative platforms for fans beyond an iPhone and a tripod as they strive to recreate live venue quality production experience from their homes. 

‘3 Pairs of Boots,’ the husband-wife Americana duo of Andrew Stern and Laura Arias, were confronted with the impact of the pandemic that struck shortly before the scheduled release of their latest album, promo tour, and slate of concert performances. They were fortunate in that their home studio where they had written and recorded their songs over the past several years served as a baseline to which they continually added hardware and software over the course of 2020 to continuously improve their live streaming capabilities.  But while in some cases moving into live streaming can be as simple as setting up your iPhone and streaming thru Facebook Live or Zoom, that’s not the case when audio quality – and especially concert quality audio – is the bar that is set for what’s acceptable.

“Once I got the basic live stream software set up using our studio mics, a nice high-end camera we were using to shoot our YouTube show, OBS (Open Broadcaster Software), and two iPhone apps (Camera Twist and Camera Live) to send audio and video into our workstation - I thought ... Ok, we're ready ... Wrong!  Audio quality was really an issue. And we’re musicians so that matters … a lot.” – Andrew Stern

As performing musicians, they discovered that streaming platforms (e.g. Facebook Live, Zoom, YouTube, and CrowdCast) are not the same. While the platforms may feel relatively identical for people using them for simple video conferencing, that is not the case for those who care about delivering high production values in live performance. Instagram Live proved to have some particular audio and video challenges that required even more experimentation and modification to their setup.

Luckily the duo had a longtime friend who is a veteran on-stage in-ear monitor expert (tours with Enrique Iglesias and Gwen Stefani), and he helped them design a system that would give them concert level sound for live streaming performances.  With the continued goal of excellence in audio output, this setup has evolved over the months.  Today Andrew even has a schematic chart to tell him exactly how to switch the audio for each different use – concert livestream, Zoom, or recording.

In the livestream setup, all audio cables feed into the physical mixer which is controlled by the software interface on the iPad with software faders, pan controls, and effects. The mixer then sends a stereo mix of all the audio sources to the Apollo Twin, a high-end audio interface with Realtime UAD processing for a warm analog sound.

The problem ‘Two Pairs of Boots’ encountered with Instagram Live was that with their setup, they could not get the images from their higher quality camera into the host’s livestream.  They solved this by swapping in an iPhone for the camera and using an i-Rig (a pocket-sized audio interface that provides 24-bit/96kHz studio quality sound out of the iPhone) to pull their audio into the session instead of being forced to use the built-in iPhone microphone (which would have defeated their concert quality goal). So for Instagram Live, they have a compromise solution where they can still control the audio quality, but can’t use their higher end camera for the video.

One downside became apparent early in the process. The small room in their house that they had used as their writing and recording studio became too tight a fit as they did interviews and live performances.  As they continued to add equipment, the ended up giving up their master bedroom and moved in the entire recording and live stream studio - complete with a black sparkly backdrop curtain and lots of lights.

“I think there were dinosaurs roaming the halls when we did our first livestream, compared to where we are now. In the end, we’re learning a ton, things are going well, and we were excited to finally release the album in early 2021, which was supposed to be released June 2020.” – Andrew Stern

The hard work of ‘3 Pairs of Boots’ is paying off for them. After several months of intense problem solving of the setup, they had a successful live release of the new album and are now doing a virtual tour of interviews and performances. To see the results of their livestreaming setup in action – watch for their livestream concerts on Facebook and songs archived on YouTube.