Live Nation and Veeps Equips Over 60 Venues to Host Live Streamed Concerts Post COVID-19
Back in January, Dr. Fauci, the United States’ leading infectious disease expert and researcher, claimed that if everything goes well with vaccine rollouts, live, in-person events may be able to return this fall. Now that we are a third of the way into the year, the nation continues to open up as vaccines are administered, and hopefully, we are starting to see the end of the pandemic that changed our lives a year ago.
In place of all of the in person performances that could not happen, live streamed concerts began popping up everywhere as a safe, pandemic friendly alternative. Now that we are starting to see live venues start to open back up, you may be thinking, are we done with live streamed concerts? According to Live Nation and the live streaming platform Veeps, the answer is “definitely not!”
Live Nation, probably one of the biggest names in concert promotion, acquired the live streaming platform Veeps back in January after the platform had a spectacular year in sales revenue. Veeps hosted approximately 1000 ticketed shows in 2020, which garnered nearly $10 million in revenue. Now, their latest venture -as was announced on Tuesday, April 13th- is to equip over sixty concert venues with the tools to host successful live streamed events with quick turnaround.
Some well known venues such as The Fillmore in San Francisco and Philadelphia, the House of Blues in Chicago and New Orleans, and the Wiltern in Los Angeles are one of the first to be outfitted for virtual concerts. Many of these venues are popular tour stops for artists. The benefit of this new venture is that at any point in time, an artist can simply flip the switch and make their performance a live streamed event. This way, fans can still have access to their shows even after a show sells out the venue, and they can enjoy it from the comfort of their own homes. It also minimizes the risks of COVID, as many venues will still limit capacity to avoid packing guests together into tight spaces.
Overall, this step in a new direction shows how COVID-19 has changed the music industry, and specifically live music, even after it ends. Concerts will be more accessible to fans, and the virtual space continues to grow and be more inclusive. In addition to Veeps, the live video streaming platform industry continues to expand. There are many other live streaming platforms that artists and viewers can sign up for, such as Sessions, Twitch, Looped, and of course, YouTube Live, Instagram Live, and Facebook Live.
Surely, we are all excited to see this pandemic end, but it’s clear to see that live streamed concerts are not going away anytime in the near future.
