Loading ...Live, From a Stage 1,000 Miles Away
Fabchannel.com streams real-time concerts from a club in the Netherlands to a computer near you. Cool. But is it profitable?
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I’m lounging on my couch sipping a beer, a Newcastle if you must know. No one else is around, and I have a laptop resting on my living room table. Wearing gym shorts and a T-shirt, and with my feet in bed slippers, I’m ready to rock. Actually, I think I’m in the mood for the southern-folk tone of Fred Eaglesmith and Band tonight. A tall country singer from Canada wearing a vest and a cowboy hat steps on stage, and I can see it with near-perfect clarity, although it’s a little dark. Not bad considering I’m reclining in New York City and the band is playing a gig at club Paradiso in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The show I’m watching streams to the computer over a website called FabChannel.com. I’m watching an archived act, but this performance originally aired live, as are all Fabchannel performances when first aired. The site was launched in 2000 by the owners of club Paradiso and its chief executive, Justin Kniest. At the time, Fabchannel streamed live concerts only from Paradiso. In 2004 it expanded to include club Melkweg, also located in Amsterdam. The technology is widely available, but Fabchannel is the only site on the Web that consistently streams truly live concerts. “The problem is there’s no business model that works,” says William Greene, professor of technology and the media at New York University’s Stern School of Business. No one has found a way to make money from the venture — yet. Fabchannel might be the first.
The Amsterdam-based site has basically become a production company. It talks to a band’s label, convinces it that the band would benefit from the extra exposure, and then pays for all the costs and promotion associated with streaming a live concert. Fabchannel does not pay the band anything other than the value associated with having extra eye-balls seeing the performance. The site’s plan is to generate income through use of advertising and by attempting to sell the content to iTunes after the initial concert. This new model hasn’t had much of a chance to work yet. The company has just begun to roll it out in an attempt to break from the Dutch government, which has helped fund Fabchannel for the past four years. But the company wishes to split free permanently. So far it has very few ads; many of which were for future Fabchannel concerts.
Because the model is new, labels do not necessarily trust it. “Not every label or management is convinced, therefore we don’t get clearance for all artists we would like,” says Joost de Wit, a publicist for Fabchannel. “But the trend is that more and more labels are wanting to work with us.” The site now has more than 700 archived concerts and other live performances that were first aired worldwide in real time. The concerts vary from rock and rap to electric and folk, and combinations of them all.
But for now, Fabchannel — which operates separate from Paradiso — can only use bands that will perform at Paradiso, which has a maximum audience capacity of 1,500 people, or Melkweg, with a max of 1,000. So, for the most part the site is limited to bands that draw smaller audiences and ones that are unlikely to have a worldwide following.
They’re the type of performers Paradiso created Fabchannel to promote. The club was looking for a way to promote the live music for the bands that didn’t receive airtime on radio or TV. “Paradiso decided to take measures into its own hands and started an online channel to promote live music and the artists playing there,” de Wit says. The company believes the site will generate audiences for its bands in the far-flung markets where their concerts are streamed. The plan works if the band books many concerts, even if the audience in each market is small. Simply, it’s the long-tail that other websites like Amazon.com and eBay have used for years — sell many products with only a small customer base for each. With large enough numbers, it adds up.
Other streaming sites bank on the popular bands to make money. Beverly Hills, California-based Control Room dominates in this type of streaming, but by using world renowned names, the company hardly ever streams concerts in real time. “Artists aren’t really comfortable with going live,” says Brad Barrish, artist relations and music programming at Control Room. So the artist prefers to retain control over what goes on the Web. It can take three to six weeks after a performance for the edited, packaged product to go online. Control Room makes money by selling to large portals, like one of its partners, MSN.
But Fabchannel, which won the 2006 Webby award for best musical site in the world, has no plans to move beyond less familiar bands. It is committed to real-time performances and will grow by adding venues. Projects are in the works with two clubs in Barcelona — the Apolla and Bikini — plus the Los Angeles hot-spot, The Roxy. This will increase the number of concerts and create a wider variety of choices for its online audiences. Fabchannel also tested a new outlet for its live concerts. On September 2, an Amsterdam-based rock band known as 16 Down performed at Paradiso. The show was aired live on Fabchannel, and if viewers wanted a third option, they could watch the group in the semi-fictional world of Second Life. Second Life is a software program created by Linden Labs where people use computerized avatars of themselves to interact with others. Although Fabchannel was thrilled with the response to its Second Life test, it does not plan to focus on the new venue, although it remains an option.
As for the Fred Eaglesmith concert I’ve been watching, it’s coming to a close with the slow, soothing “It was You.” At the conclusion, Eaglesmith says “Goodnight everybody.” With the help of Fabchannel, “everybody” wasn’t limited to the audience in the club, but the “tens of thousands of people” who de Wit says will watch at home. Rock on Eaglesmith; rock on. I’m going to bed.
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