The coronavirus pandemic has forced virtually all live musical performances onto the internet – and paid-for music live-streams have been so successful that, when and if it finally recedes, a lot of performances are likely to stay online. Live performance has been the backbone of the music industry since streaming gutted record sales, so musicians, as well as the industry that supports them, have lost most of their income recently. Concert industry trade publication Pollstar estimated that the global concert industry lost US$9 billion, or 75 per cent of its revenue, in 2020; the world’s biggest promoter, Live Nation, reported a 95 per cent fall in revenue. Enter paid live-streams. Erykah Badu was probably the first major artist to present one, in March, 2020, but since then an avalanche of others have followed. In June 2020, for example, K-pop boy band BTS’ BangBang Con attracted more than 750,000 viewers in 107 countries, and generated nearly US$20 million in revenue. The biggest name globally in festivals is about to join in, with the organisers of the Glastonbury festival staging a virtual festival , Live at Worthy Farm, on May 23. According to music industry research company MIDiA, live-streamed concerts made US$600 million in 2020, with revenue increasing by about 300 per cent between June and November. BTS and SuperM online concerts keep K-pop industry ticking over Musical entrepreneur Jaeson Ma, an investor in TikTok rival Triller , which recently bought Verzuz, a company created by hip hop producers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz that offers battle-format live shows, says: “We live in a duality now, where both physical and virtual are the new reality. It’s definitely going to become part of the ecosystem.” Producing a live-stream presents technical and creative challenges. “Live-stream events include many critical parts which all must work perfectly together,” says Khee Lee, chief monetisation officer of Kiswe, which produced the BTS event, among many others. “It starts with ticketing, where you have an unlimited number of seats. At the time of the event, you must validate each ticket to make sure it is valid so that only paid viewers are watching the content. Then you need to deliver the live content around the world with no buffering. Finally, you need to engage the audience in authentic ways that help the at-home viewers feel like they are part of the event.” That last part provides opportunities. There is no way of replicating the physical presence of an audience, but there are a number of ways performers can interact with fans, and they can be more engaging than standing in a crowd of thousands. For Badu’s stream, for example, fans were able to choose the set list. And before Thai record label What the Duck’s ran the Online Music Festival Top Hits Thailand in June, 2020, fans downloaded an app that allowed them to send the various acts messages; the label also ran a competition to chat with artists mid-performance. BTS fans were able to use their devices to light up an interactive map that appeared on stage with the band – and Kiswe discovered that it more than doubled audience engagement. There’s also the potential, for instance, for fans to control the camera angle they see an event from – and the possibilities of using virtual reality to enhance the experience are intriguing. But, whatever the bells and whistles, no one is going to be happy paying for a stream unless the quality is demonstrably high. As Ma puts it: “It will be very important for the live-streaming production values and quality and immersive experience to be premium. I think it’s going to have to be better technology, more robust tools, more immersive experiences, so it feels that something really special is being bought.” Samkwan “Moy” Tonsompong, What the Duck’s managing director, says that early on in the pandemic, artists started posting their own live sets on social media, usually shot in their homes and not of a quality level that justified charging for them. The company decided to do something about that, but found itself in uncharted territory. “The first thing I learned: an online concert and a real-life concert are totally different worlds,” he says. “It’s more like doing a TV show. How are you going to keep fans on a small screen for one to two hours? It was challenging for us. All the fans think your product costs would be cheaper than a traditional concert, but they’re not: you have to do all the same things.” Encouragingly, 50 per cent of Top Hits ticket buyers had never been to a physical concert. “It’s an opportunity for bands to reach out to new markets,” Samkwan says. UK live-stream production company Driift, a spin-off from artist management company and live agency ATC, effectively functions as a promoter of virtual music events, from Nick Cave and Niall Horan concerts to others by the likes of Biffy Clyro, Laura Marling and Andrea Bocelli; it is also producing Live at Worthy Farm. The company has quickly become known for sparkling production values and often stunning locations: Cave at London’s Alexandra Palace, for example, or Bocelli at Italy’s Teatro Regio di Parma. We all love to go and see live music. But you don’t have to swap one for the other. They’re different formats, at different price points Ric Salmon, chief executive of Driift “With YouTube and Instagram Live, we’ve got to a point where the audiovisual medium is basically free,” says the company’s chief executive, Ric Salmon. “You have to deliver something that feels scarce – that has value to it. People are happy to pay for a beautifully produced event. “We work with a lot of interesting, multidisciplinary artists who push themselves to do things in challenging and creative ways. One of the great joys of it is when you film an artist in an incredible location without an audience. It allows you to capture proximity to the artist that you could never get in real life. This is a deeply creative format.” It can also be a profitable one, as in the case of the BTS show, or of Cave’s concert, for example, for which 36,000 tickets were sold at a price of about US$23 each. With little precedent, setting prices for these events can be hard, but they seem to have settled down pretty quickly at about that level. That’s far cheaper than a traditional concert – another reason why live-streams are likely to be here to stay. As Kiswe’s Lee puts it: “Right now, we are seeing the music industry move toward a future hybrid model. People will return to live events in droves, but there’s also widespread acceptance of live-streaming as a supplement for artists. Not everyone in the world can access live concerts. The additional live-streaming option gives artists the ability to greatly expand monetisation channels and reach new audiences.” Adds Salmon: “We all love to go and see live music. But you don’t have to swap one for the other. They’re different formats, at different price points.”