Author | Wan Yi Edit | Fan Zhihui
Recently, the news of the closure of a number of online performance platforms has punctured the bubble of online performance boom.
The latest to shut down is Mandolin, which was previously named the "best online performance platform". In September 2021, this new platform, which was born more than one year ago, beat LiveOne, the "first online performance stock", and Veeps, an online live streaming platform acquired by Livenation, and was named the "best online performance platform" by Pollstar, and made a splash at the Pollstar Live conference in Beverly Hills.
The gap between the present and the past has to be said to be somewhat cruel.
With the resumption of offline performances, the boom in online performances seems to have quietly faded, and many online live streaming platforms have quietly come to an end by integrating or shutting down. But at the same time, there are also some players who have survived the transformation.
So, when we talk about online performances, what else is there to talk about? Behind this short-lived bubble, is there still a way to live online performances?
Online performance bubble bursting?
Faced with the office now empty, Mandolin CEO Mary Kay Huse will probably recall the early summer when Mandolin won the award. If you think about it, it was only two years ago.
At the time, no one thought the online performance revolution would end because the pandemic was over, and the accomplished Mandolin raised $12 million in Series A funding in 2021 to prepare for the post-pandemic transition.
With the return of offline performances, Mandolin made a lot of attempts.
For example, providing digital services that improve the offline performance experience, such as allowing live audiences to order food online without queuing; Or sell tickets for pre-show star meet-and-greets and closing parties, as well as offer replays of live performances. Last year, Mandolin also planned to partner with dozens of venues to provide live streaming infrastructure that would allow musicians to experience online performances at low cost, with the platform covering production costs and sharing the proceeds with the venue and Mandolin.
Still, after burning $17 million in funding in less than two years, Mandolin recently officially announced its closure.
Of course, Mandolin is not the only one who has shut down the online performance platform.
Last December, Sessions, an online performance platform founded in 2020 by Pandora former owner Tim Westergren, also shut down without warning, leaving musicians who had not received news of the show's fees and closure frustrated and angry. Flymachine, an online live performance platform that received $21 million investment from industry insiders in 2021, now only shows "intermission", and the last dynamic update was in May 2022.
In addition, many online performance companies have had to transform in order to survive.
For example, LiveXLive, which was once reported by the British "Guardian" as "wanting to dominate the live broadcast of music festivals", has broadcast 146 live music performances between 2020 and 2021, experiencing triple-digit growth in social media participation, and more than 149 million live views. LiveXLive also planned to split its online live performance business and go public independently, but it ended in failure. Today, LiveXLive has changed its name to LiveOne, and its main source of revenue has become the audio business, but the last live event was a year ago.
In fact, after the return of offline performances, people have more entertainment options to choose from, and the decline of online performances is expected, but this is not the only reason why online performances are difficult to sustain. John Petrocelli, founder and CEO of Bulldog DM, an American live production and distribution company, said in an interview with Billboard that some low-quality online performances have also damaged the reputation of online performances.
While online performances sound simple, can be pre-recorded, and don't require audience participation, there are still many things that can go wrong in between, the most common being when the platform crashes due to a spike in usage.
Since online audiences do not need to grab the front row seats like offline music festivals, and do not need to enter in advance, most users will pour into the platform in the last few minutes, resulting in congestion in the system line; In addition, online audiences can also buy tickets at the beginning of the performance and even during the performance, which is more difficult to predict the scale of users, and there may be platform overload, affecting the user experience.
Although Maestro has hosted many large-scale live events, such as Billie Eilish's live concert in October 2020, when it hosted one of the biggest live broadcasts during the epidemic in April 2021, American singer Marc Anthony's "Una Noche" concert, more than 100,000 fans still completely collapsed Maestro, and viewers could only "stare at blank or stuck computer screens" for hours. Only then was the show notified that it was officially canceled. For this reason, the organizer, Loud and Live, also took Maestro to court.
Not only that, John Petrocelli believes that true live broadcasting requires a completely different set of professional skills, and requires a team of artists and production companies to work together to achieve good results. This is not only a requirement for equipment and production teams, but also for artists. Mary Kay Huse, CEO of Mandolin, mentioned in an interview that audience demand is not a problem, the problem is whether the suffocated artists are more busy performing offline, and whether they are willing to find time to understand and experience online performances to create an interactive immersive live broadcast experience.
In addition, the profit model is also a headache for most online performance companies. John Petrocelli mentioned that many show companies simply charge customers extra for their revenue, or charge 10 to 15 percent of the box office cut, but if you deduct credit cards, broadband bills and labor, there's almost no money left.
John Petrocelli said, "I don't know how these companies will survive without a lot of VCs."
How to survive?
In the face of the crisis, for some entrepreneurs, this is the end of death, and for others, it is entering the reshuffle stage. There are not many online live broadcast companies that still survive, and in summary, the survivors are roughly divided into such categories.
First, a small platform with user accumulation and low cost. For example, StageIt, which was founded in 2011, is mainly aimed at waist and tail musicians. Musicians only need to have a camera to perform live on StageIt, the duration and cost of the performance are determined by the musician, and the platform charges 20% of the ticket share, compared to Twitch's three-seven or five-five points, the advantages of StageIt are self-evident.
But for StageIt, it's also stress. Of this 20% revenue share, StageIt has to bear the copyright licensing fees of the music, broadband fees, credit card fees, and website operation costs, but fortunately, the rest of the costs are very low. Even at its peak in April 2020, when StageIt's turnover exceeded $1 million, it had only two people in its office.
There is also Boiler Room, which was established in 2010 to locate and serve underground niche cultural circles, which has rich publicity resources due to its accurate audience, long accumulation time, and the founder's background in the advertising industry. Not only did Boiler Room quickly gain media coverage, including the BBC, but the content of the show expanded from electronic music culture to hip-hop, jazz, experimental and even classical and world music. After accumulating its audience and credibility, Boiler Room also enlisted the cooperation of well-known brands such as Ray-Ban Eyewear, which not only provided financial support, but also helped Boiler Room to facilitate more different experiments.
However, most of such small and beautiful platforms ended up being acquired by large platforms and becoming part of the latter's expansion of the value chain.
Currently, StageIt has been acquired by online live performance platform Vnue, Boiler Room has been acquired by ticketing platform Dice, and Venewlive has been integrated into HYBE's fan community platform. Among them, after Live Nation became the major shareholder of Veeps, Veeps was equipped with live broadcast equipment in more than 60 venues in the United States, including many theaters, stadiums and other top venues, so that performers performing in the venue could broadcast live "with one click" and truly become a supplementary income for offline performances.
The second is to find a platform with a competitive business model.
For example, the interactive live streaming platform Maestro has received a total of 22 million US dollars in investment, including NetEase, Sony Music, and Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, to expand its business scope around live streaming technology as much as possible in the post-epidemic era. In addition to being able to host online live streams, virtual performances, XR performances, or a mix of the three, Maestro's live streaming content is not limited to music performances, but in 2021, it told the "creator economy", the most popular story of the overseas investment community at that time.
Specifically, Maestro users include not only brands, artists, and organizations, but also creators on any platform. Maestro supports diversified monetization methods, such as creators holding events, the audience bears the handling fee, and creators can get 100% of the event ticket revenue; In addition to this, there is membership subscription revenue, sales revenue of virtual and physical goods; In addition, the platform also supports creators to cooperate with brands, obtain sponsorship, and also support audience rewards, such as a combination of Taobao, Xiaogoetong and YouTube.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the platform is Moment House (aka Moment). Despite receiving a total of $13.5 million from industry insiders such as well-known agent Scooter Braun, singer Halsey, Patreon founder Jack Conte, and Forerunner Ventures, Moment House still looks very low-key, rarely interviewed, and has hosted important events such as Grammy's online warm-up party, Justin Bieber's New Year's online performance, etc. It has made small achievements in the music industry.
After successfully hosting important music online performances, Moment House expanded its live content by including seven senior industry executives, aiming to become a comprehensive platform for "providing exclusive virtual live streaming experiences for core fans", selling not only live online performances and replays of offline performances, but also podcasts, LGBTQ charity performances, movie premieres, fan meetings, master classes, comedy shows, etc.
In addition to various performances, Monment House also offers Afterparty fan meetings, peripheral and one-on-one video meetings, allowing fans to video chat one-on-one with creators. It's worth noting that Max Culter, head of Spotify Talk Creator Content & Partnerships, also got involved, which is perhaps why there's so much podcast content on Moment House.
epilogue
In contrast, in China, after the dust settled, except for Douyin and TME live, almost no online performance plans of the system were announced.
Among them, TME live has explored a lot in brand cooperation and peripheral sales, and diversified online performance revenue as much as possible, and the online concerts of Cui Jian and Jay Chou have become remarkable marketing events; Douyin, on the other hand, takes online performances as one of the directions for the expansion and diversification of platform content, and the way business results are considered will be different.
In general, entrepreneurs who were born for the vent often fall when the vent dissipates.
As far as online live streaming is concerned, it seems feasible to find your own market segment and build a benign business model. However, the current market stage has not yet run out of real winners, and I believe that with the improvement of online performance technology and more exploration of profit models, this track will enter a more mature stage.
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