Tory Lanez and Youtube bring the concert experience into the modern era
With the success of the first quarantine tour, the concert experience has now entered it’s next evolution.
In an unforeseen turn of events, Youtube has established itself as the commander of live music experiences with a concert by the “King of Quarantine”, Tory Lanez. With all of the attention going to Instagram very early on during the quarantined experience, the expectation was that Instagram would be the first space to evolve how fans were able to engage with their favorite artists. Not only did they have the users, the involvement from the celebrity community via live-streaming, and the command of the current trend, but they had the most time with those advantages than any competitor. With that said however, the pairing of Tory Lanez and YouTube for the “Social Distancing Tour” caused the tide to shift and with it, the concert experience.
Don’t you love it when an investment you’ve made back in the day begins to pay off years later? Well back in 2011, YouTube started streaming a select few events with the hopes of creating a new experience for users to engage with on their platform. YouTube Live was born and rolled out to certain YouTube partners with accounts that were able to maintain the brand integrity while catering to a dedicated fan-base. Very soon, it became a resource to be used for news outlets like CNN and MSNBC, sports channels like ESPN, and festivals such as Coachella. Fast forward through years of development and mainstream adaptation, YouTube released a host of new features around 2018 that made live streaming a better experience for content creators of all kinds and the audiences they command.
One of the main key features is the Live chat. As obvious as the name suggests, this allows for the streamers of the community to connect with each other and the content’s creator in real time. Many YouTube influencers and celebrities today use this feature to build a deep connection with their audiences as they create with them. To make sure this feature maintains impact, it even comes with chat replay for YouTube Live so the subscriber’s audience can follow the conversation even though the live stream is over. This was a huge step forward in relation to the competitors of the space such as Instagram and Facebook, who both came with these features from the beginning of their live streaming experiences.
In an effort to elevate the impact of the live chat feature, YouTube upgraded the experience with what they call “Super Chats”. Super chats is a feature that enables creators to monetize their videos and live streams. YouTube users that are watching a live stream can purchase a Super Chat, which is a special animated message that appears in the chat stream, standing out from basic comments in order to get the attention of their live stream host. These purchases are then revenue that’s generated for the host and creator of the live stream. Super Chats are pinned to the top of the chat and can cost as low as .99 and as high as $500. It can be assumed that this feature was a direct response to the growing popularity of platforms such as Twitch, and the way they have been able to monetize the streaming experience for gamers and their very dedicated audiences. As more and more interest groups have come forward with communities that are committed to supporting them, the need for brands to generate a real return for their investment is even more of a priority. As the biggest video platform on the internet, YouTube was poised to provide that environment and they showed that with the Tory Lanez Live performance.
The aptly dubbed “King of Quarantine” has carved out his place in the upper echelons of today’s music artists and rightfully so. With the success of two back to back projects, Chixtape 4 and New Toronto 3, becoming independent while owning his own masters and publishing, and the newly created Quarantine Radio, Tory Lanez’s brand has skyrocketed like tech company stock on the market. With all of his success elevating the return on his investments, there presented a limitation hosting through the Instagram platform. Instagram, unfortunately, has not developed a way for creators and hosts of live streams to be paid from their experience. This presents a huge challenge when you’re an artist who’s hosting live streams with an average of 300,000 people. It isn’t surprising then that Tory Lanez turned to YouTube to find his solution.
“I’m bringing my energy to YouTube Friday May 1st!”
The Grammy nominated artist made the announcement like Lebron as he proclaims which team he plans to join for that season.
“I’m going to be performing live on YouTube for the first time at 4 PM PST/7 PM EST! This will be viewable live to everyone globally…where fans can interact with the artist first hand, request favorite songs, change the lighting and personalize how they want it to feel and look.”
From the beginning, the experience was marketed as a secret, global phenomenon that you had to be apart of to really benefit from. The level of build up that he managed to create was something YouTube hadn’t seen before. For the platform, it was a symbiotic merging of two worlds that for a long time felt forced to meet; the world of technology and the artist. With the spotlight still hot and fresh on Tory Lanez, the anticipation mounted as days lead up to the event. It was as if the world was waiting for a designated music release. When it was show time, fans tuned in, and there it was, just another live-streaming concert experience.
Where was the revolution? The change? The questions rose as the show began, and then we all witnessed something very different. While in the middle of performing one of his songs, Tory Lanez noticed a fan’s Super Chat and their song request. He told his band to stop playing, and he announced that he’ll play the requested song instead. BOOM! Game changed.
From their, the experience raged on like an ever-flowing stream of fan reactions. Tory Lanez began singing to people individually, fans were being highlighted and shouted out on stage, as Tory Lanez would request for people to represent their cities the chat room lights up with cities and countries being shown in attendance; the live show had just become interactive. This interaction wasn’t just one sided either. Just as easy as fans were able to request that Tory Lanez sing one song in particular, Tory Lanez was able to control which songs he wouldn’t sing until he saw certain types of reactions from the audience. The number of those in attendance during the live stream was staggering and represented the final piece to prove the concept. Currently, for an artist to sell out an arena like Madison Square Garden, they must market, promote, and sell 20,789 tickets. In less than one hour, Tory Lanez had the equivalent of almost 3 Madison Square Gardens worth of people logged in and viewing his live show.
“We just sold out 2 stadiums! I’m going Super Saiyan!!!!!”
With the success of Tory Lanez’s “Social Distancing Tour”, the landscape and strategy for live shows has changed for the benefit of the audience, the artist, and the business that depends on their success. A “sold out show” no longer exists in this new world that’s being created. Tory Lanez managed to get over 50,000 people tuned in to his live show, and that number only grew as more and more people found out about it.
If the way Instagram lives accumulate viewers is the trend, then it’s only a matter of time before we have YouTube Live concerts with more than 250,000 people in the digital audience. When you couple that with the Super Chat feature, you’re now able to monetize potentially each member of the audience for the duration of an entire live show, as opposed to the ticket sale business model where it’s one and done. This presents a completely new way of establishing revenue projections for artists, which then puts their ability to leverage their music and branding on a higher level while remaining intimate with their fan bases.
For the audiences, this now takes the greatest aspects of the live show and combines it with the greatest aspects of social media to form a hybrid experience for the masses. From the beginning, you’re given a role as being a co-creator in the concert experience. From there, you’re encouraged to use the Super Chat feature to unlock more abilities such as altering the show experience, choosing songs to be performed, and whatever else the experience allows for. The best part of this? You can enjoy this experience from the comfort of your location of choosing; making the experience that much more personal.
This quarantine has been a major disruption for us all in one way or another. When we look around, there are industries being devastated, industries being created, and in some cases, industries being redefined. I believe that when we are presented with challenges, it forces change, and it’s up to us to see how we want to respond to those changes. Tory Lanez and YouTube partnering to present a new image for the concert experience shows us the way forward with audience and community focused engagement. Could this just have been an exciting blip on a vast radar, possibly. However, it’s just as possible that we’re witnessing the concert experience change forever; now wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to say you were apart of or a witness to?
