History was apparently made last week when the unsigned hopefuls RedBoxBlue became the first band to play live on Facebook, with five daily webcasts from a south London studio. The band’s shows are still available to watch on their profile (tinyurl.com/6rgsbs), though the dodgy sound quality and crushing averageness of their pedestrian guitar-pop doesn’t exactly make it essential viewing. Still, as the technology improves and more acts take advantage of it, the idea of discovering new music via webcasts on social network sites looks likely to catch on.

Thursday, June 13th 2008
by Chris Salmon

Unsigned band RedBoxBlue have played the first ever live gig on Facebook, performing a 25-minute set from a studio in south London.

It is the first time any band has played live on a social networking site in the UK.

Singer and guitarist Jon Haselden said: “It’s a good opportunity to reach people all around the world.

“We just want to give people the chance to see us. It shows a band can play this kind of music online.”

The group worked with Facebook and an independent computer programmer to design an application that broadcasts live video.

“If we did it on our own website we would have to worry about technical things like bandwidth and streaming,” said Jon. “Facebook takes care of it for us.”

The band are planning to perform live on the site every night until 8 June.

Year of the online gig?

Music fans have been downloading recorded tracks for years but live gigs have never really taken off on the web.

Faster broadband connections and a shift in the way music labels operate mean that this is starting to change.

The fans were ready for this ten years ago. Now the record labels are catching up
Justin Kniest, Fabchannel

Influential US technology magazine Wired called 2008 the year of the music webcast.

New online gig sites like Fabchannel, iClips and DeepRockDrive are starting to become more popular.

Fabchannel webcasts live shows from two dedicated studios in Amsterdam, with repeats held online for up to a year.

Artists like the Fratellis, Bloc Party, CSS and Kate Nash have all performed thanks to a deal with the major music label Universal.

The site’s boss, Justin Kniest, told Newsbeat: “You will never be able to replicate the atmosphere of a live gig on a computer screen but that’s not what we are after.

“There are plenty of people out there who aren’t able to watch because the gig has sold out or the band isn’t playing in their city.

Fabchannel has just opened a UK office and is planning to build a new studio in either London or Manchester.

Ready-made fanbase

Facebook and its main rivals MySpace and Bebo are also starting to experiment with live music.

All three have a big advantage over other websites, as bands can tap into a built-in fanbase for each gig.

MySpace has broadcast the US NME awards from New York and a Ben Folds gig from a studio in Nashville.

The site is planning its first live British shows later this year, according to head of music Dom Cook.

He said: “I think it’s difficult to replicate a live gig on the internet. Unless you want to turn the lights off, put your earphones on and stand in the corner, it’s going to be hard to get that experience. But there are ways you can twist the live show to make it feel more exciting.

Ideally we’ll start to offer both highlights and live performances on the site
Hal Stokes, Bebo

“There is definitely potential in live music. You have a huge community of hardcore fans who want to find out every little thing the band is doing.”

The UK’s third most popular social network site, Bebo, has already run a handful of live events in the US and is also planning its first European shows.

Bebo’s head of music Hal Stokes said: “It’s something we’re very focused on at the moment. Ideally we’ll start to offer both highlights and live performances on the site.

“We know you can’t beat the experience of a live gig but we’ll start down that road and ultimately our users will decide what they want to watch.”

Thursday, June 5th 2008
By Jim Reed

Dutch site Fabchannel secured permission earlier this week to webcast shows by Universal Music Group artists at the two biggest rock venues in Amsterdam. Today, the company announced the availability of the first show posted under the deal: a February 8 performance by Jimmy Eat World in the main hall of the Paradiso.

I’m not the hugest fan of this band; some the guitar ideas are decent, if straightforward, but there’s something about their sound and vocal style that just rubs me the wrong way, no offense to fans of the band. Still, I’m enjoying watching the show to see what they’re like live, and it’s interesting to note that they have lots of fans over there (this was a sold out show).

Here’s an embedded video of the concert:

Monday, February 28th 2008
By Eliot Van Buskirk

Das niederländische Musikportal Fabchannel hat seinen ersten Vertrag mit einem der Musik-Majors unter Dach und Fach: Die Seite soll bald auch Konzerte von Universal-Künstlern übertragen und on demand zur Verfügung stellen. Das Modell werbefinanzierten Web-TVs ist auf dem Vormarsch.

Im Jahre 2006 brachte es Fabchannel, bis dahin ein vor allem in Europa bekanntes Angebot, zu höheren Weihen und internationaler Bekanntheit: Die Seite wurde als beste Musik-Webseite der Welt mit dem als Oscar der Internet-Welt geltendem Webby-Award ausgezeichnet. Verdient hat sie es sich mit einem ganz einfachen Konzept: Biete den Besuchern Live-Konzerte und On-demand-Mitschnitte kostenfrei und in hoher Qualität.

Alle Konzerte wurden bisher in Amsterdam aufgezeichnet, die meisten im Paradiso sowie auf einigen anderen kooperierenden Bühnen. Gemein hatten sie bisher außerdem, dass es vornehmlich Newcomer oder Indie-Bands waren, die dort zum Zuge kamen. Das könnte sich jetzt ändern: Als erstes der großen Musik-Labels kooperiert nun Universal mit dem Fabchannel, will die Konzerte der Künstler des Musikkonzerns (Timbaland, Ich+Ich, Rihanna u.v.a.) auf diesem Weg auch über das Web verbreiten.

Für Fabchannel eröffnet das den Weg zur Expansion. Fabchannel will in Aufnahmestudios in Konzertbühnen in England, Deutschland, Spanien und den Vereinigten Staaten investieren. Der Deal mit dem Musik-Major ist nicht einseitig: Zum einen sollen Universal-Künstler bei Fabchannel zu sehen sein, zum anderen will die Musikfirma die Mitschnitte aber auch als Video- und Audiodownloads über verschiedene digitale und mobile Kanäle vertreiben.

Im achten Jahr seiner Existenz kommt Fabchannel damit seinen Zielen ein deutliches Stück näher:

Über das Internet qualitativ hochwertige Videoinhalte zu bieten - und das werbefinanziert. An Werbung mangelt es noch, doch das könnte sich mit größeren Namen ändern.

Tuesday, February 27th 2008
Frank Patalong

Fabchannel.com has signed a multi-territory digital exploitation deal with Universal Music Netherlands covering live recordings of Universal artists performing at the Paradiso venue in Amsterdam.  

Under the deal, fans will have access to live concert videos from Universal artists performing at the Paradiso and other Fabchannel related venues.

Fabchannel will record the concerts in broadcast quality and make them available for fans to view on Fabchannel.com and to buy as video and audio downloads on its download store.

In addition, Universal will distribute the video and audio downloads across digital and mobile services.

Fabchannel CEO Justin Kniest says, “This is a significant step forward for Fabchannel. The quality of Universal Music artists contributes to our goal of offering our viewers the hottest and broadest selection of live music. 
   

“Today’s news is a milestone for Fabchannel’s ad-supported live music video model, which enables artists, labels and media companies to make their live music available. This model also gives brands and businesses new ways to connect and interact with a highly-engaged audience of consumers in the 25-and-under youth demographic.”

Fabchannel.com’s online concert video archive contains more than 850 live concerts from venues including the Paradiso and Melkweg in Amsterdam, the Sala Bikini and Apollo in Barcelona and The Roxy in L.A.

Tuesday February 26, 2008
   

Universal Music Netherlands has reached an agreement with Dutch Webcasting specialist Fabchannel.com to record and distribute live performances of the music giant’s acts. 

Through the blanket arrangement, unveiled today, Fabchannel will tape Universal Music artists performing at the Paradiso venue in Amsterdam, and other related venues. All footage will be subject to management approval.

Fabchannel boasts an archive of more than 850 exclusive live concerts filmed at the Paradiso and nearby Melkweg clubs, including gigs by Simple Minds, Damien Rice and the Frames. But until now, only independent label acts had signed up.   

Justin Kniest, CEO of Fabchannel, says Universal’s participation represents a massive breakthrough for his company, which counts the Paradiso, Dutch investment firm Foreman Capital, and the City of Amsterdam among its stakeholders.

“Together we’re going to create new channels,” he tells Billboard.biz.

For the first few months, visitors to the Fabchannel site will have first view of the concert videos, which will stream following a pre-roll ad. Universal Music will then deliver the video and audio downloads to purchase from online music stores and mobile services.”We can create content which both of us can monetize,” he explains. “If we make money from ads or a subscription model, [Universal] get revenue share of our business. And the other way around, when they sell the material worldwide though their distribution network, we get a revenue share from that. It’s a win-win for both of us.”   

A recent Paradiso concert by Jimmy Eat World is the first taped under the new arrangement, and is currently waiting for clearance. Plans are to roll out the formula to other markets. “We’re now looking at partnerships in the U.K., Germany and America,” says Kniest. “We plan to hook up the Paradisos of Europe, and record shows every day.”

February 26, 2008
By Lars Brandle, London
   

Fabchannel, which webcasts shows from the best two venues in Amsterdam (Paradiso and Melkweg), is one reason 2008 will be the year live music webcasting makes sense. The company plans to announce a deal Tuesday with Universal Music Netherlands that will let it offer free, ad-supported webcasts of Universal Music artists’ shows at those venues.

Universal artists slated to record shows over the next few months include Richard Bona, Ian Brown, Chamillionaire, DJ Shadow, Feist, Amy McDonald, Method Man, Kate Nash, Roni Size, Sigur Rós, Willie Nelson and more. Webcasts are subject to artist and manager approval, but Fabchannel CEO Justin Kniest said only two or three artists out of the thousand or so the site has recorded have declined to have their shows webcast.

Kniest said the deal covers viewers from around the globe, rather than just those in Holland, despite the fact

As part of the deal, Universal gets a share of revenue from Fabchannel’s ads, which include 10-second video ads that run before the show, plus access to Fabchannel’s recordings of its artists, which Universal Music Group gets to stream and sell on its own sites.

Fabchannel uses four camera angles and high-quality sound recording equipment for these shows, so Universal gets a valuable new source of original content from its artists, and fans get a great high-end alternative to fuzzy, distorted concert videos on YouTube.
We see shows for free and everybody makes money. Perfect.

Tuesday, February 25th 2008
By Eliot Van Buskirk

With ticket receipts soaring and online music more popular than ever, why is live concert webcasting — which sits squarely at the intersection of these trends — still lagging?

After showing early promise at the turn of the millennium, webcasters’ path to success was slowed by three major roadblocks having to do with technology, audience and record labels.

The good news for music fans is that all three will likely give way in 2008.

“You’re never going to replace live music in terms of being there, of feeling the bass on your chest, and the smells, and all the other things that happen there,” said Arik Berquist, founder of Synchronicity Live, which lets bands stream their concerts free.

Berquist is right, but his company’s core assumption — that there’s a large, hidden audience for live online music — is almost certainly on the money as well. Although the online experience of a show doesn’t come close to being there, you do get to chat with others who have tuned in from around the world, and the only cost is your time. (Beers from your own fridge are cheaper, too.)

The technological roadblock that hampered the industry as it waited for efficient webcasting tools and increased broadband penetration has already crumbled. Today, nearly a third of U.S. internet connections are broadband. As of June 2007, that meant 66 million potential viewers domestically and a total of 221 million broadband users worldwide. Meanwhile, the online media explosion has fueled the growth of content distribution networks, or CDNs, run by companies like Akamai, AT&T and Level 3 that are capable of streaming shows in real time from concert venues.

The nature of live webcasting requires the signal to be distributed to viewers around the world in more or less real time, and sometimes one CDN isn’t enough. According to Justin Chapweske, founder and CEO of Swarmcast, these networks can be combined to provide an experience that’s “basically the same as watching television.”

His company’s streaming solution switches between content distribution networks in real time based on how they are performing for an individual viewer. Chapweske claims that Swarmcast was able to webcast a six-hour musical tribute to Nelson Mandela on iClips Network this month “so that the user (could) stay tuned in for hours and hours on end and never see any sort of interruption, jittering, rebuffering or anything like that.”

The audio on these webcasts is far from optimal; live mikes and streaming compression see to that. But the video quality often surpasses much of what’s available on YouTube.

If the technology issue hasn’t been solved yet, it’s damn close. But like the proverbial tree that falls unheeded in the forest, a glitch-free webcast doesn’t count if nobody sees it.

Luckily for webcasters, the second roadblock — wrangling viewers — is disintegrating. The booming popularity of social networks provides an easy way for webcasters to reach music fans, who tune into live concerts for an hour or more (as opposed to the seconds or minutes usually spent watching video clips). The extended time commitment makes music fans that much more attractive to sponsors.

Live webcast directory NowHound takes a different approach, one that could cultivate a huge audience, both for the service itself and for live online music in general. The recently launched site provides centralized listings of current and upcoming live events from around the internet that could become a crucial part of the music webcasting scene (the site also aggregates news and other live online programming).

“Imagine sitting at work in the States and flipping around through a couple hundred live concerts going on in Europe that second,” said NowHound founder C.C. Lagator in an e-mail interview. “Because artists performing live online are so scattered across the internet, they’re essentially preaching to the choir, with only their own fans able to follow them. In order for this space to grow, and for this to become a viable promotional tool for artists, there needs to be a way for live webcasts to be seen by new fans.”

Nate Parienti, co-founder and chief strategy officer of iClips, called the directory concept “extremely interesting.”

“I think something like that could be really helpful in alerting the mass market,” he said.

With the technology online and the audience on tap, the remaining roadblock is, as with so many other new ideas in music, the record labels. These days, they tend to own some of their artists’ publishing rights, so they have a say over whether shows can be webcast live.

Parienti said the rights-clearance process for a music webcast usually takes weeks. Even worse, webcasters must clear rights worldwide to cover their global audiences.

“It’s no use to me working with the Dutch sales office of Universal, I have to go the London and the New York offices to get rights… It’s mind-boggling,” said Fabchannel’s Kniest, who webcasts about 800 bands per year from Amsterdam’s two leading venues (Paradiso and Melkweg).

Although Kniest has had more luck with indies over the past eight years, he said major labels — especially EMI and Universal — have become more amenable to live streaming in the past year. Fabchannel has also begun offering labels a share in revenue generated from 10-second ads (pay-per-view pricing is not seen as a good option, because it restricts the audience even more than a 30-second ad would). The company hopes to expand Fabchannel’s live webcasting service to venues in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Still, webcasting negotiations could be moving too slowly for a music industry in desperate need of new revenue streams.

“It’s taking so much time that sometimes you wonder, ‘How much time do you think you’ve got to create new models?’” said Kniest. “New models take time to become big and get profitable, and I don’t think the record companies have two years left in the form in which we know them now.”

Whether the big labels come on board gracefully or not, 2008 looks like the year live music webcasts will take off.

Monday, December 24th 2007
By Eliot Van Buskirk

Das Musikfernsehen ist tot, es lebe das Web-Musikfernsehen: Im Internet bekommt der Musik-Fan das, was er wirklich will - on demand und in immer höheren Qualitäten. Seiten wie Fabchannel lassen zudem ahnen, wie TV der Zukunft aussieht.

Musik mag allgegenwärtig sein, echte Musik-Fans erleben trotzdem harte Zeiten: Das Formatradio dudelt selbst das beste Stück in Dauerschleifen kaputt, bis man es nicht mehr hören kann, und im Fernsehen setzen die einstigen Musiksender längst auf einen Mix aus Paris Hilton, Playboy Mansion und völlig hirnfreien Dismissed- und Pimp-my-egal-was-Formaten. Was wäre das schön, sich zu jeder beliebigen Zeit ein Programm nach Wunsch aussuchen zu können und nach Lust und Laune beschallen zu lassen.

Genau das ist die Verheißung des Web-TV. On demand und jederzeit ein Programm selbst zusammenstellen zu können, diese Möglichkeit ist im Web längst Standard, obwohl es noch immer eine Minderheit ist, die so etwas wirklich nutzt. Breite Akzeptanz hat inzwischen Web-Radio gefunden, und auch hier reicht die Spanne vom Sender nach Wunsch (im Web streamen Schätzungen zufolge rund 9000 Sender in guter Qualität) bis zum Programm nach Wunsch wie bei Last.fm (siehe rechte Spalte dieser Seite).

Die meisten Musik-Videoseiten im Web sind noch wahre Wundertüten. Musikvideos sind im Internet - ganz im Gegensatz zum Fernsehen - allgegenwärtig. Oft ist die Qualität jedoch durchwachsen: Auf Plattformen wie MySpace, Yahoo Launch oder Stage6 finden sich zwar immer mehr legal veröffentlichte Videos in guter Qualität, doch noch immer überwiegt bei ihnen, YouTube und Co. das von Nutzern eingestellte Musikvideo - mit sehr unterschiedlichen Qualitäten.

Doch es gibt auch regelrechte Programme. Web-TV und IPTV versprechen eine TV-Zukunft, die nicht zuletzt der Sparte gehört. Wie so etwas aussehen kann, zeigt beispielsweise die niederländische Seite Fabchannel.

Konzert-Web-Kanal Fabchannel: Das ist Musikfernsehen

Die hat schon einige Jahre auf dem Buckel. Bereits 2000 begann Fabchannel, vornehmlich Konzerte kleinerer, meist niederländischer Gruppen über das Web zu streamen. Über 700 Konzerte fanden sich zeitweilig in der Datenbank, inzwischen aber hat sich die Seite kräftig gemausert. Zunehmend bietet Fabchannel Konzertmitschnitte auch prominenterer Künstler in guter Qualität.

Die Seite kämpft derzeit angesichts eines enormen Benutzer-Andrangs aber mit dem Problem aller Sparten-Web-TV-Sendern: Die Server sind überlastet - für ruckelfreies Streaming von Bewegtbildern ist im Internet noch immer eine relativ teure Infrastruktur nötig.

Der Klick auf einen Künstler führt zu einer Konzertseite, die rechts ein Tracklisting mit allen gespielten Titeln bietet, links ein Videofenster. Man kann sich die Mitschnitte wie weiland im Fernsehen in Gänze ansehen, oder einzelne Titel direkt anspielen. Das klappt ganz hervorragend und - eine schnelle DSL-Leitung vorausgesetzt - fixer als bei einer DVD.

I want my Web TV

Im Vollbildmodus offenbart sich, dass die Videos nicht HD sind: Bei Bildschirmauflösungen über 800 Pixel wird das Bild eben pixelig, die Qualität ist aber akzeptabel. Der Ton ist - natürlich immer abhängig von der Qualität des Konzertmitschnitts - meistens gut bis sehr gut, da bleiben keine Wünsche offen.

Fabchannel ist auch über das Web-TV-Programm Joost zu empfangen - doch warum Umwege gehen? Während bei Joost nur Best-of-Ausschnitte gezeigt werden, bietet Fabchannel selbst das ganze Programm.

Das Beispiel zeigt, wo der Trend hingeht. Spätestens nach Aktivierung des Vollbildmodus wird der Monitor zum neuen Fernseher, man vergisst irgendwann, dass man noch im Web ist. Noch nicht beantwortet ist dagegen die Frage, wie solche Angebote auf Dauer überleben wollen. Solange man im Normalmodus schaut, prangt rechts stets eine Werbung - der Vollbildmodus hingegen ist werbefrei. Vielleicht muss man solche Offerten genießen, solange sie noch kostenfrei zu haben sind.

Beispielvideo: Paul Weller in Concert:

Ein Klick ins Videofenster startet den Mitschnitt, ein Klick auf das kleine Fenstersymbol unten rechts in der Navigation öffnet das Video im Vollbildmodus. Bei solchen Embedded-Videos kann es vor dem Start zu einer kurzen Vorpufferungs-Zeit kommen, bis der Film läuft können also einige Sekunden vergehen. Voraussetzung ist ein aktueller Flash-Player, für den - so nicht vorhanden - automatisch ein Update-Download angeboten wird.

Thursday, November 15th 2007
Frank Patalong