Concerts as livestream - does it work?

In 2020, an attempt was made out of necessity to establish concerts as livestreams on the Internet. Is that a real alternative? And does it work as an event concept?

At the beginning of 2020, the Corona pandemic suddenly forced all event organizers and locations to establish new digital event formats. Conventional face-to-face events were banned overnight, and in no time at all the otherwise rather conservative industry experimented with new concepts. At the top of the list of possible solutions was the idea of online events. Concerts and even festivals were announced as livestreams and made available mostly free of charge on platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

Of course, we have also followed this development very closely. In the meantime, we have come to the conclusion, both from a private and a professional point of view: You can forget about trying to transfer concerts 1:1 to the Internet as a live stream. At least this is true for a large part of the events. The German director Christian Petzold goes even further, calling digital festivals "methadone programs.

As a service provider for digital event services, we should really be encouraging people to implement events digitally. And we do. But only for the B2B sector. In other words, classic business events. Because there, it's mainly the content that counts, while music events focus on emotions.

In short, the following applies to livestreaming: "Gala is fine - rock 'n' roll rather no". With one exception: Livestreams can certainly work as a supplement to live events. But first things first.

Why do people attend concerts?

To get to the bottom of this phenomenon, we took a closer look at why people actually attend events. After all, pure content such as podcasts, readings and music is now streamed in real time to people's cell phones via apps like Spotify and the like. So there must be something else behind it.

After all, to get to concerts, people accept costs and efforts. Concert tickets usually cost more than a sound recording, and often attending a concert even involves traveling to another city. To find out what actually makes live events so appealing, musicologist Martin Pfleiderer evaluated a number of studies.

It all started with music events in the 19th century. At the time when urbanization drove people into the cities. People had always sung in pubs, but at some point they became too cramped. So music and dance halls were created, and the idea of today's event venues was born. This, of course, made something like touring possible in the first place. And, as we all know, this trend continues to this day.

What falls by the wayside when concerts are livestreamed?

But events such as live concerts are not just about the pure performance on stage. Martin Pfleiderer lists the following aspects that influence the live experience. Let's see what gets lost on the way to the Internet.

Property	Presence Event	Online event
Atmosphere of the venue	✓	X
Venue size	✓	X
Composition of the audience	✓	X
Entrance fee	✓	✓
Awareness of the artists	✓	✓
Music genre	✓	✓
Behavior of the audience	✓	X

Of course - everything that has to do with the event location falls by the wayside. And of course the complete part of the audience. What is only one point in the table is of course much more in real life. At live events, people want to dance, sing and laugh together. And that also with strangers, but at such an event you are no longer such strangers - after all, you enjoy the same music.

Of course, you can invite friends for the online concert at home. But then it probably won't be any different than a TV evening with a live recording on DVD. The live atmosphere, the group experience and also the interaction between the artists and the audience cannot be transmitted. Just think of the classic concert rituals like clapping, trampling, shouting or - loved and hated - the inevitable waving of lighters during the quieter notes.

Online concerts are most similar to pub concerts, where you're mainly occupied with your beer and the round of tables, and the music tends to lift the mood on the side.

So are concerts as livestream generally nonsensical?

No, they aren't. Livestreams will certainly never be able to replace real music events. Nevertheless, there is a willingness to watch a live event on the Internet as well. This is interesting, for example, for people who are simply too far away, who don't have enough time to travel, and of course people who can't attend the event for health or financial reasons. In other words: as an additional offer, livestreams are a good thing.

In television, there are already established formats such as the WDR Rockpalast, which has been a fixed institution for live and recorded concerts since the 1970s. According to an older GfK study from 2007, 10% of concertgoers under the age of 20 regularly watched live concerts on the Internet at that time. And just under 3% said they were also prepared to pay for them. It can be assumed that these figures are significantly higher again today, around 13 years later.

For bands, parallel livestreams are also a good opportunity to reach a larger audience and thus increase awareness - regardless of the capacity of the booked venues. And even when shows are sold out, it's a consolation for disappointed fans to at least be able to watch the concert on the Internet.

What relevance do concerts have?

To put it briefly: a very great relevance. According to the GfK market research institute, around a third of all Germans over the age of ten attend at least one music event a year. Assuming an average ticket price of around EUR 30 - 35, the financial importance of live events alone can be guessed at. Within the entertainment sector, Germans only spend more money on books (EUR 1,972 million) than on live events (EUR 1,444 million). Compared with recorded music, twice as much is spent on concerts. This shows how important such events are for musicians. While sales of recorded music continue to decline, boosted by the spread of streaming offerings, enthusiasm for live events remains unbroken. And there is another fact that should not be forgotten in this context: per concert visitor, about 17.00 EUR are invested in merchandise - in addition to the ticket price.

Who is particularly affected by the pandemic-related concert cancellations?

If one follows the evaluations of Martin Pfleiderer, one can say that on the part of the audience it is almost all age groups. Because the enthusiasm for music events is unbroken from 19 to 50 years. The type of concert varies, of course, but on the whole, people don't seem to get any quieter until they're over 50, and then they don't attend events as regularly. On the side of the artists and organizers, however, it's mainly the open-air festivals, musicals and rock and pop concerts. These events appeal to all age groups and account for the majority of live events. This part of the entertainment sector has been hit particularly hard by the lack of events in 2020. This is also reflected in the fact that this is where most attempts were made to create a replacement with a livestream. Since there was apparently a great deal of uncertainty as to whether it would be possible to charge "admission" for such a virtual event, a donation option was predominantly used.

The bottom line remains: Concerts as livestreams are a substitute neither for the audience nor for the organizers. In the future, however, the online formats now being tested could work well as a nice supplement to normal events. We then talk about hybrid events, in which people can also participate who, for a variety of reasons, cannot or do not want to attend the actual event.

(Source: "Live events of popular music and their reception" / Martin Pfleiderer / published in the book "Musikrezeption, Musikdistribution und Musikproduktion" from the publishing house "Gabler Edition Wissenschaft" and the studies included in the text)

 

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