Two noteworthy festivals, Coachella and the New Orleans Jazz Festival, take place within the next couple of weeks, and both shows will have live feeds available online for music fans.
Hey Dave?
Yes?
I want to go see Coachella. It’s on the 29th and 30th.
Have a nice time.
Lend me money for tickets?
I didn’t quite catch that.
I’m sorry, I said, “how much are tickets going for at Coachella?”
Two-day pass runs $165 plus fees.
Fees?
Ticketmaster.
Ah. Maybe I’ll head to New Orleans for the Jazz Festival, it’s a shorter drive.
Big Chief VIP passes sold out for the first weekend. Second weekend is $500.
That’s in yen, right?
Wrong. Single day passes are $30. You could just save yourself the money you don’t have anyway and watch the feeds online?
But I want to go. One of the Jazz Fest producers said in the Wall Street Journal, “there are sights and smells, the things you can’t get online.”
That is true. The computer doesn’t have Smell-o-vision, so one would miss out on that fabulous, sweaty crowd in the Sun, aroma. Both shows will be online. AT&T and Yahoo are handling the Coachella feeds, while MSN is running live from New Orleans on April 30 and May 7.
Online feeds really took off last July. AOL ran live coverage of the Live 8 shows over broadband, and basically made MTV look really bad in comparison. If MSN or AT&T has learned from AOL’s example, which we hope they have, we should have some solid coverage of performances from both events.
As providers and promoters find better ways to deliver shows while managing to fit in advertiser spots without interrupting the flow of the broadcast, music fans should begin to see even more options for live feeds than what are available today.
Ideally this would give exposure to smaller independent acts that have built up a following. Considering the cost of bandwidth and the expense of covering a show (there is a people cost as well as an equipment cost), most of those acts will have to rely on being part of festivals that do draw that coverage.
Speedier PC platforms and better cameras in lower price ranges may someday do even greater promotional wonders for an act that MySpace and fans have done for British performers The Arctic Monkeys.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
