Both Evinar and Gyroskope are services that musicians can use to monetize streaming video. Evinar focuses on livestreaming via Facebook while Gyroskope features videos for which customers pay to stream as often as they like. Neither service is exclusive to musicians but both seem potentially useful to musicians attempting to diversity their revenue streams.
Please let us know what you think about these options in the comments. And please consider answering this question, what are you looking for as a musician seeking to monetize video on the web?
Evinar - Monetize Live Concerts on Facebook
Evinar offers the ability to sell tickets and livestream concerts via Facebook. Evinar takes a 40% cut of ticket sales but you can also offer concerts for free.
The process seems pretty simple from setting a date and ticket prices to using their dashboard to invite your friends and fans via social media. Viewers can buy tickets ahead of time via the Evinar Facebook tab which will display a stage image with a live countdown.
In addition to broadcasting live via your webcam, you can also upload images and videos as part of the show and text chat with viewers during the event. The chat feature includes moderation so, if fans get out of hand, you can moderate what gets posted. You can also appoint additional moderators to help with the event.
Charging people for livestreaming events comes down to whether or not your audience wants that. My only concern would be with how comfortable your fans would be making a purchase on Facebook given a recent AP-CNBC poll finding that 54% of respondents "wouldn’t feel safe using the platform for financial transactions such as purchasing goods or services."
Gyroskope - Monetizing Video Streaming
Gyroskope is an ad-free service designed to monetize video. It's not exclusive to music but that is one of the areas on which they're focusing.
The basic concept is that artists pay a monthly fee, set their own prices and upload videos and previews. Gyroskope handles the rest including payments. It appears you can also offer video viewing for free though that's not emphasized.
Pricing starts at $19 a month for hosting 5 videos. In addition, there's a 2.08% plus .35 charge for payment processing. It's unclear how much bandwidth you get but, at a certain point, you either upgrade your account or start paying $30 per 100 GB.
Viewers pay per video and can watch them at anytime via the Web including free use of Gyroskope iPhone and Android apps. However, they aren't initially purchasing the videos but rather the right for relatively unlimited streaming. Once they hit 500 views of an individual video, viewers are then asked to download the video.
There's clearly some math to be done here to figure out what you should charge based on bandwidth usage and account costs but the bigger question will be whether or not you're able to entice fans to pay for a viewing experience of media that they can't initially download. Given that videos have such a long history of being used as promotional tools, Gyroskope may require the creation of special content to entice music lovers.
Janet Morrissey, writing for Fortune, shares a bit more about the company including some comments from founder Todd Smith. She also rounds up some questions raised by livestreaming video company reps who are future competitors since Gyroskope is planning on adding such capabilities in the future.
To see who's using the service, you can browse or search Gyroskope's current inventory.
Note: Opening thumbnail is from the Gyroskope account for Bonnie "Prince" Billy.
Hypebot Features Writer Clyde Smith blogs about business at Flux Research: Business Changes and about dance at All World Dance: News. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
