Gigs cancelled due to Coronavirus? Share your live streaming/revenue stream ideas here

dsimms

Inspired
Please share your thoughts about options for musicians to stream performances and generate a revenue stream. I'm on the board and webmaster for our local musicians association (montgomerymusicians.org) and would appreciate your thoughts/success stories/what worked and what didn't. For starters I'll throw out @chris ideas recently posted on the FM3 Now Shipping thread...
it's definitely the way to go. try it.

make a Twitch account for the biggest potential audience, but mostly young.
make a Mixer account for a smaller, but more dedicated audience, more age 30+ viewers in general.
YouTube is good for wide reach, but low interaction.

you can use restream.io to broadcast to all at once if you want, including integrated chat with their app.

all platforms support donations that can appear on your stream, with goal bars and other recent activity to inspire others to do so as well. StreamLabs is one of the best services for that. all free.
 
Anyone have experience with Twitch/BandsinTownLive? Not sure if this is for anyone or just for those who were touring to begin with.

 
I posted this in another thread, but feel this is important to note:

As live-streaming really starts to pick up for artists, everyone please remember to donate, tip, Super-Chat, etc. Nearly every streaming platform has this capability, so remember to give a little something while enjoying their performance!

And artists/performers, live-streamers, etc., don’t be afraid to ask as well!
 
If you like Ben Gibbard - he's been doing live streams and calling out local (to them) or national groups to donate and/or help out. Kinda cool.
 
I did a separate thread about this but apparently no one is doing it or if they are, they're not posting how they're doing it.

I struggled for about 10 days, getting lighting configured and cobbling together a couple very old macs and trying out old versions of OBS software and NDI plugins (to get iphone video into OBS) until I found a configuration that worked. If you have upstream bandwidth and enough graphics power you can pull it off. I did a livestream and layered text, webpages (for causes to donate to) and funny memes on top of my video feed. They made things more interesting and interactive.

The iphone was feeding OBS over wireless and the mixing board was feeding it over Cat5. Because of that, they were out of sync. I used final cut pro to determine milliseconds off and then OBS controls to compensate. I tested and it streamed in sync and recorded on local hard drive in sync.
But when I went live on FB on a saturday at 7pm, FB threw audo & video way out of sync. No one seemed to mind and plenty of tips came in for the 45 minutes I was testing.

I think a key component to focus on is the interaction. Dedicate a screen to comments, preferably a wide screen rotated vertically, and interact with comments between songs. I found interaction was 15-30 second delay between when a person punches it in to when your reaction gets back to them. It's a weird time-warp thing, and it's even weirder having no room to read except silent comments popping up only a tiny camera dot on a phone to make "eye contact" with. Strange times!!

That said, I think streaming has revenue potential for audiences that can't see you locally. Check out this guy. He's been streaming at 1:30pm US mountain time so he can hit the EU when they're partying. https://www.youtube.com/user/mikemassedotcom/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf
 
I did a separate thread about this but apparently no one is doing it or if they are, they're not posting how they're doing it.

I struggled for about 10 days, getting lighting configured and cobbling together a couple very old macs and trying out old versions of OBS software and NDI plugins (to get iphone video into OBS) until I found a configuration that worked. If you have upstream bandwidth and enough graphics power you can pull it off. I did a livestream and layered text, webpages (for causes to donate to) and funny memes on top of my video feed. They made things more interesting and interactive.

The iphone was feeding OBS over wireless and the mixing board was feeding it over Cat5. Because of that, they were out of sync. I used final cut pro to determine milliseconds off and then OBS controls to compensate. I tested and it streamed in sync and recorded on local hard drive in sync.
But when I went live on FB on a saturday at 7pm, FB threw audo & video way out of sync. No one seemed to mind and plenty of tips came in for the 45 minutes I was testing.

I think a key component to focus on is the interaction. Dedicate a screen to comments, preferably a wide screen rotated vertically, and interact with comments between songs. I found interaction was 15-30 second delay between when a person punches it in to when your reaction gets back to them. It's a weird time-warp thing, and it's even weirder having no room to read except silent comments popping up only a tiny camera dot on a phone to make "eye contact" with. Strange times!!

That said, I think streaming has revenue potential for audiences that can't see you locally. Check out this guy. He's been streaming at 1:30pm US mountain time so he can hit the EU when they're partying. https://www.youtube.com/user/mikemassedotcom/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf

Thanks for elaborating on your experience. I haven't had much traction on this thread either. I was hoping to hear some experiences with Twitch and Mixer. Looking around the internet, the consensus seems to be using FaceBook or YouTube to stream live with PayPal and Venmo links in the descriptions. I talked with Larry Mitchell about this a few days ago. If you don't know him, he's a great guitarist and big Axe FX advocate. He stays busy working on projects, doing clinics and putting on one man shows, travelling a lot. He regularly streams on Facebook from his home studio on Tuesdays. He's now doing other Facebook streams with donation links in his description or during the comments. I think this is probably the simplest way to stream with a revenue channel. It appears difficult to get set up with a donate now button embedded in the video. It would be great to be able to archive the videos and put them out there on YouTube with an embedded donate button, but for now we can put the PayPal/Venmo links in the descriptions like Mike Masse does in that link you shared. Either way, keeping a chat going, encouraging social sharing/inviting friends in and reminding folks about the donation links looks critical.
 
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