Margo Price at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville
In this year of almost no in-person shows, musicians, venues and fans have done their level best to address both the economic hardship and the numbing boredom by staging streaming concerts. The experience hasn’t been without its growing pains, but several different approaches have developed in the nine months since lockdowns began, and each has shown its merits.
The most intimate, interactive streams have come live and direct from artists’ bedrooms and rehearsal spaces. Viewers interact directly in the chat panels — a throwback to chat rooms of the ’90s — and tip via Venmo or PayPal. Though sometimes compromised by spotty picture quality and intermittent buffering, these streams give artists a way to workshop new material and maintain a connection with their fans, while audiences get a unique window into where and how the music gets created. Like a pass-the-hat situation at a house show, however, they’re not typically lucrative, especially if they’re streaming for free on social media, YouTube or Twitch.
A step up on the technical end are pro-shot shows like the ones East Nashville venue The 5 Spot offers on a regular basis. Some are free, and some are pay-per-view on streaming platform StageIt; some happen live while others are filmed ahead of time. Larger venues like Exit/In and Brooklyn Bowl Nashville have put on numerous streaming concerts of their own. Both were among the participating venues in Billy Strings’ wildly successful Streaming Strings Tour in July. City Winery, 3rd and Lindsley and the Ryman have used their existing sit-down concert model to stream some performances with limited-capacity in-person audiences.
For the viewers at home, these are essentially instant concert movies. If you’re already a fan of the band, forking over the nominal fee (if there is one) to tune in is a no-brainer. Even when members are playing masked, bands’ excitement at returning to the stage after months at home is a beautiful thing to witness.
The most inspired streams have combined live and pretaped content in thoughtful and entertaining ways. We recognized Far Out Nashville’s Far Out Free Fest as the Best Streaming Festival in this year’s Best of Nashville issue. Organizers Brianne O’Neill and Kari Leigh Ames turned their annual psych festival into a four-night online video extravaganza, combining more than 60 original submissions — live and prerecorded music, spoken word, animation and more — into a streamlined, user-friendly whole. Third Man Records began its Public Access series in March with a couple of live sets from the Blue Room. But once the stay-at-home order came through, the TMR crew shifted to an edited variety-show format that maintained their trademark retro aesthetic — something like late-night public access TV viewed through 3D glasses. The label also put on a telethon in this style in October for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Marquita Bradshaw.
Some streamers who were enthusiastic about the format at the beginning have shifted their focus to making new recordings. It’s understandable: Zoom fatigue has set in for everybody. But those who’ve kept livestreaming with style and purpose have shown that while streams aren’t concerts, they’re not a bad way to experience something either. With more uncertain times ahead — and the livelihood of local music institutions hinging on our support — consider streaming not a replacement, but an alternative with its full potential waiting to be unlocked.
