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https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-find-concerts-on-spotify?r=US&IR=T

Spotify have been recommending concerts for more than a year now - first with physical concerts and then virtual concerts. Unless I have missed something, they are not planning to host concerts within their app and move into the space Melody plan to occupy. They could well do so in the future but I'm yet to see any evidence yet.

Spotify have dipped their toes in hosting their own concerts but never within their own app. https://musically.com/2020/11/13/spotify-to-host-tokyo-super-hits-live-2020-livestream-concert/

Spotify concerts = recommendations and links to concerts hosted online by 3rd parties - no quality control, next to no revenue generation.

MelodyVR concerts = Bespoke concerts produced by MelodyVR to be viewed within the upcoming all in one MelodyVR/Napster ecosystem.

No need to panic.

@Lordfont - to answer your question at 12:42, the change from 4g to 5g is great news for MVR and VR technology more generally.

The reason why headsets are so big as the moment is that the devices need to be very powerful in order to be able to process the VR content.

The hope is that, as internet speeds increase, less and less of the processing will need to be done on the devices themselves and that it will be possible to be so of this 'in the cloud'.

When this happens, headsets will come down in size and possibly price.

The app will not need to be adapted to be '5G compatible' but increased speed internet may mean that features Melody have been holding back are able to be released.

That being said, I imagine most people will use their broadband connection to access content so we have to hope that home broadband speeds keep up with 5g speeds.

This is a long and technical explanation which is worth a read -

https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/wiki/cloud-ar-vr-whitepaper/

The specifically relevant bit is :

3.1.2.3. Network bandwidth and latency requirements
Currently, 4K panoramic video only requires 20 to 40 Mbps data rate and 50 ms latency. As 5G networks contribute to considerable improvement in data rate (more than 100 Mbps) and latency (less than 10 ms), users will enjoy more comfortable viewing experiences.

Rikkitikki - I'm honestly not trying to be antagonistic but, from what you've written, it doesn't seem as though you actually understand what VR is.

There are some very clear differences between AR and VR which I'm not sure you are aware of.

Whilst the LG show was not available in VR, literally all of Melody's other shows have been. For something to be VR, you don't need to create a new environment - it's about the complete immersion of a viewing experience. There are lots of articles online that compare the two technologies.

Melody have plans to bring in more AR elements into their products but, until now, their focus has been on VR and their name is anything but a misnomer.

To add to my previous post, I really can't see the logic in charging so much for the live shows.

In normal markets, the reason prices rise is to ration demand. When there aren't infinite units to be sold, price rises until supply equals demand.

But unlike most products, Melody can offer a (basically) unlimited number of tickets for its shows. So there's no need to set the price high. Better to have more people watching so they have the app on their phone and are more likely to buy the next show being offered.

Such high prices also cause some resentment between fans and artists as could be seen from the Twitter comments for the LG show.

I can only imagine that Melody *deliberately* limited demand by setting the price so high because they were worried about the technical issues that may arise from too many viewers at once. This could at least to some extent be seen as a show to test their capabilities for bigger shows to come.

We'll see what pricing strategies they use for future shows but if a ~£9.99 subscription is to include at least some live shows, £16.95 for a single show (or even more if bought through the app), looks unsustainably high in my view.

For everyone questioning the viewing figures, consider the following:

If Melody's aim was to maximise ticket sales for LG, why were they priced so high?

Let's imagine 50,000 tickets were sold at £16.95. That's ~£850,000 revenue. Would people have been more impressed if 170,000 tickets sold at £5? That would have generated the same revenue.

So focussing on ticket sales alone is a bit of a mistake in my view.

That being said, I don't expect live shows to continue to be sold at that price - best to draw fans in with a lower price and then sell them merch and/or a subscription in the back of the show.

Let's not forget that Melody has promised a social element to their live shows which could really help elevate and differentiate their product. Hopefully that's 'coming soon' too!

Here's my summary of how AM & SH have done.

Back in 2016, SH spoke about the 'hockey stick' (exponential) growth we could expect for VR. This has not happened in the way he anticipated. Whilst every year, VR adoption is increasing, it's still somewhat of a niche technology and will remain so until the headsets become the size of spectacles which SH said was not too far away. Each year, we hear predictions about how VR will grow but there seems to need to be a paradigm shift for it to be in every household.

Because of the adoption of VR not being as quick as they liked, MVR pivoted and started offering their content on mobile to bridge the gap.

Without a marketing budget that would allow them to advertise on TV or on billboards etc, they have chosen to form partnerships with telecoms companies to get the app out there and onto phones.

When this didn't happen as quickly as they'd liked, they initiated a RTO of a company significantly larger than them with a ready made user base to offer a complete package to.

Those are just a few examples of how nimble those running the company have had to be and how they have been able to adapt when required.

Melody have been criticised for promising certain things and failing to deliver (PlayStation, MVR viewer, theatre, expanded content library etc).

I think some of these things really will be 'coming soon' but some more expectation management would be nice. It's possible that the strategy changed direction once the RTO began. Maybe they knew that the eventual package they would offer would be so superior to the one available before completion that they decided to hold back on a number of elements to their product for the big launch (the RNS now mentions documentaries which melody have only dabbled in once a few years ago).

So my conclusion is that, whilst things haven't panned out as quickly as they and we might have hoped, I think we're in good hands and have lots to look forward to. For anyone complaining, it's worth remembering just how small Melody is in relative terms and how few employees they have. Perhaps things are moving slowly but so long as they're moving in the right direction, that's enough for me.

After being touted for some time, I think it's fairly safe to say Melody's subscription model will launch in Q1 next year.

From the current terms and conditions, we can learn the following:

'We may offer a number of Subscription plans, including special promotional Subscriptions with differing conditions and limitations.'

'Some live/near-live stream Content may be available through a Subscription, while some may not be included and access will have to be purchased separately.'

So my questions are:

1) How much do we expect the monthly subscription to cost in the UK?
2) What will it include?
a) Existing library of pre-recorded content?
b) Expanded library of pre-recorded content?
c) Capped number of live shows per month?
d) Unlimited access to non-premium live shows per month?
e) Something else?
3) Will the subscription be linked in any way to Napster initially?
4) Will a Melodyvr viewer be offered as part of the subscription?
5) How widely will the subscription be made available? (Beyond the UK)
6) Will the subscription allow content to be cast to big screens? BT charge for this with their EE add on
7) Will theatre shows be included as part of a monthly subscription?

I know any responses will just be educated guesses on these questions but I'd be interested to read people's thoughts/predictions.

The all important question is what do you get for the ~£5 monthly subscription fee? It says 'from' $8.9 - is that a reference to the preferential pricing mentioned in the RNS ('Customers can also choose to commit upfront to an annual MelodyVR subscription, at a preferrential rate') or is it a clue that there are going to be tiered subscriptions with differing levels of content/access?

There's no need to Google anything - the forecast revenues are literally in *today's RNS*.

@Bonker99 - if you look back, you'll see the terms were very similar when the O2 deal was signed. Without knowing how many subscribers they're guaranteeing, it's hard to read too much into that.

What is perhaps as exciting as anything else about this announcement is that the subscription model must be coming very soon (certainly within 3 months of 'early Jan' when this new deal is offered to customers in Singapore).

But there's no need to try to guess revenues as this is one of the occasions where we can talk about them reasonably confidently - the forecasts are right there in the RNS ('annualised revenues of c.$100m post completion').

If you read the RNS, you'll see that Melody is only being offered to customers in one of the 21 countries Singtel operate in. And it's not being offered to all them - only those who purchase the very most expensive handsets.

As a long term holder and champion of MVR (view my post history), I'm happy to celebrate this news but I'm not getting carried away based on imaginary numbers.

What's great is that, given Melody's limited resources, these telecoms partnerships are the perfect way to get Melody onto people's phones. Once that first tranche download the app, word will spread and others will follow.

Expanding into Asia is hugely exciting and it's reasonable to expect that once the relationship is established with Singtel in Singapore, it could be expanded into their other territories.

As great as this announcement is, some people are getting a little carried away (as is often the case). From the RNS, Melody will be 'offered as the exclusive 5G music partner to *new and upgrading 5G Singtel customers purchasing handsets, including the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G and iPhone 12 5G*.'

So calculating revenue based on the uptake from a % of all Singtel users is a bad idea. The question is, of those Singtel customers purchasing these specific new handsets, how many will continue their melody subscription after the trial period. Hopefully, given the fact they can afford the handset, it will mean that there will be plenty, but it's on Melody now to keep the content coming so the offer is too good to refuse.

We'll see. I certainly hope the ticket sales blow us all away. But, like I say, because of people's very high expectations, it would mean that even ticket sales that were 10x higher than Melody has ever achieved would be disappointing in their eyes.

Not sure if your question is serious?

The national lockdown ended on Dec 2nd so people might have chosen to meet friends/go to a restaurant/go shopping etc (where possible within their tiered restrictions) instead of watching the show on Dec 5th. That might not be a major factor in determining ticket sales but it just makes it hard to predict how many may have been sold.

Who knows if we'll ever see the viewing figures but I think some of the posters on here stand to be disappointed given their lofty predictions for viewing figures and the share price on opening.

I've been posting on this board for 4 years and while some of the more negative posters have been shown up from time to time as great news emerges, I'm glad I haven't tried to count the amount of times people have said the share price will be 'x' by 'y' because they are invariably just as far off the mark as the negative posters.

As I see it, the LG show was a success regardless of how many tickets were sold. It was a great calling card for any artist who wants to do something similar and has clearly led to a big increase in the number of downloads of the app.

I don't mean to dampen any expectations too much but, given the number of likes on Liam's tweets about the show (~15-20k), people expecting 250k-500k viewers may be disappointed (to like a tweet is far easier than to part with £16 for a ticket). The show clashed with the first Saturday night after lockdown and was priced at the upper end of what could reasonably be expected for a virtual show.

I'll be delighted be proved wrong and make no mistake - I am a big fan of Melody but the risk is that what should be celebrated as a great success might be talked down if it doesn't meet these (in my view) unrealistic viewing figures.

Puddin1006 - calling a pre-recorded show 'live' is not new.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_by_the_Sea

Oasis released 'Live by the sea' on VHS in 1995. As you might be able to guess, despite being named 'Live', it was not broadcasted in real time.

Sorry, to clarify, the cameras they use can be purchased and are off the shelf but Melody tweaks them in such a way that they become more suited to the different types of concerts they films.

Filming theatre will ultimately be much more straight forward and predictable than filming live music shows. It is melody's experience with the endless variables associated with live music that means that others may try to compete with them but that they'll have a lot of catching up to do.

So again, it's not just the tech, it's the know how that we should be celebrating.

Yes, Lordfont - melody's tech is advanced but their experience with the tech they have is what sets them apart.

I went to an event a while ago with Matt Williams, the Technical Production Manager at MelodyVR. What was revealing was that they don't use off the shelf cameras for their VR shows. Rather, they have customised 3 different 360 cameras that they rotate between according to the nature of the different events they record. No 360 camera is suitable for all events and while any competitor could, in theory, buy the same cameras as melody, what Melody has is the experience in matching the technology to the context as well as the hardware customisations that have been developed after filming 1000+ artists.

So yes, the tech is impressive but that isn't what sets Melody apart. What sets Melody apart is what they're able to do with the tech.