Member Info for Robidicus

Me three

Its a strange time at the moment. I can't see that anyone is doing any live streams at the moment. We'll surely start to see tours planned for summer 21 cancelled. Livenation need to find a way of replacing that revenue. I can't believe this period of complete silence across the industry will continue, which makes me think something is rumbling but who knows.

I'll get worried when I see Livenation promoting live streams at scale through other providers.

I see that you haven't learnt from your recent forecasting experience KoK.

Hi RestLess,

Interesting post, thanks.

As you say, I have no answers but just my two cents. I subscribed to Spotify for a few years and did the decent thing and switched to Napster when the RTO was announced. The key for me is the point of difference versus Spotify as, given their market share, it's likely we're going to have to pull share from them or bring on new audio platform adopters (which will be much harder IMO). The initial point of difference is likely to be the visual content. Melody have done a great job (and spent a fortune) creating a visual library over the past few years and this would be something that wouldn't be too easy for Spotify to copy, although we already know that they have aspirations. With this in mind, price is an interesting one; do you back you product and go higher than Spotify's premium package of 9.99 a month? Do you go aggressive and under cut with a better product? Is there enough margin to go around, given the pressures we read about on artists. Personally, I'd either go like for like (9.99) or cheaper with a view to a future price increase. I think all attention will need to be on moving Spotify subscribers who are likely to be very price sensitive. The only curve ball being live events, you could play around with pricing a lot here, i.e buy a live event and get a free sub for X amount of time.

Another point of difference Spotify have worked hard to develop is Podcasts (which are free). I wonder if Melody have aspirations in this area? People want to go to one place for their audio/music. The live podcasting scene is healthy and it wouldnt be hard to replicate the model with live podcasts.

In summary, whatever we do should seek to blow Spotify out of the water. The good thing is, with live and pre-recorded shows, we have the point of difference to be able to do so.

All conjecture with little to no knowledge (of anything).

I'm not sure I completely agree ubuntu. Whilst I agree with your optimism about the future, I'm curious as to why you are so positive about Nikki Lambert given that she's had a decent amount of time at Melody? I recall when she joined Melody there was a big fanfare but, personally, I've not been overly impressed with the marketing side of things. Could do better would be my appraisal. We've seen social media tweets coming late, containing the wrong information and little in the way of brand traction from Melody. I don't mean to be negative about Nikki Lambert but I'm not sure we've seen anything radical or particularly innovative from Marketing. I'm not sure I see her as THE keystone to future success. The relative success so far seems to be in AM and SH's ability to partner and deal make, which is a great sign IMO.

That's the one!

Lol. Full Metal Jacket.

Careful heerflik, do you not remember what happened in the film after he said that?

100% pshepp, wildly optimistic forecasts. I'm glad someone else sees the same thing. Careful, I got called a whacko and embarrassing for pointing this out....

Cant access the article as its behind a pay wall.

I'd be interested to read more about the 400k ticket sales for Boy George. Has this been published?

Do you have any more info on this Iofa?

E.g I've heard whispers of 1,000,000 tickets sold. You still haven't expanded on this.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/dua-lipa-livestream-cost-viewership-1096950/amp/

To clarify, I'm a wacko for suggesting that its likely to be circa 50k sales rather than 1,000k?

As to my intentions, realism and calling out wild forecasts. Call me what you like but history shows I'm not a deramper nor controvertial, unlike others....

We're not going to agree and I'd rather not get drawn into your overly emotive conversations. I guess time will tell and I hope I'm wrong.

500k tickets would generate somewhere in the region of £7,500,000 gross revenue to be shared out. That would turn the music business on its head, I think we'd know already and the share price would be 25p. You'd also see app reviews through the roof, which we've not seen. I'd love to be wrong but I think you're setting yourself up for some burst bubbles. Like I say, I think it will be more than 15k but 15k sales is more than he would get in a physical space for a broadly similar price, artist and record company get paid, model is expanded. I personally think it'll be somewhere around the 50k mark, which would be great.

The Dua Lipa show that KoK mentioned was streamed free in China, hence the 5m 'sales'.

Just my opinion...

For clarity, I didn't write that I thought 15k. I wrote that I thought 15k would be success. I also said I thought it would be more than that but absolutely no where near the one million Chinese 'whisper' that you 'heard'.

.... whispers of 1 million views of the LG concert. Madness.

I wonder if we may get some viewing metrics this soon. Someone (apologies can't recall who) put some more realistic ranges and their views of how successful this would make the gig. Reflecting on this, I personally see anything over 15,000 as success because that's what an artist like Liam Gallagher would be playing to in a physical space. I expect the number to be slightly higher but not in the 100's of thousands. You'd see a step change in app ratings that we've not seen. I think its important that expectations are realistic.

I've supported this share by buying headsets and gigs but I draw the line with a BMW.

From Clash Music:

A polished, but instinctive, raw affair, the show represents a complete one-off based on a thought-provokingly, clever idea. Executed with surprise and skill, it is one for the history books. Just what the concert doctor ordered, this much-needed music ‘drug’ addresses a year largely written off in live music terms.

Just my two cents on numbers... I think a few of the figures thrown around so far are very optimistic, anything over around 15k would represent success for the artist, which is what matters. Remember more than one person will be watching per ticket so 15k sold will be at least 30k watching. LG regularly plays to crowds of 5-10k at 20-25£ per ticket and so he and his management would be happy with anything over 15k, particularly in the circumstances. I still think this is a fight for streaming platforms at the moment, reach and quality. If this is deemed a commercial success a plethora of artists will follow.