Live Streaming Boosts Music Festival Boom

American music festivals are in a strong growth phase and that includes free live streaming broadcasts of festival performances. With festivals selling out there's a larger audience interested in checking in on favorite acts or special events. As these audiences grow the potential for advertising revenue from live streaming grows as well.

2012 has been a great year for American music festivals both large and small. In addition to growing numbers of attendees, luxury tiers have emerged.

2012 has also been a big year for live streaming concerts and might "also go down as the year when live-streams started crossing into mainstream." This growth offers an additional possibility for revenue related to music festivals as advertising and sponsorships are likely to grow as well.

Some festivals now have multichannel broadcasts with professional broadcast standards. Audiences are reaching into the millions. YouTube is getting in on the action with festival channels.

Chris Roach, head of biz dev at AEG Digital Media, the company that livestreamed Coachella, observed:

"We've seen the average view time is over an hour in one sitting…That's a pretty engaged eyeball for an advertiser to put their dollar against."

Jay-Z's recent live streamed concert represented another aspect of mainstreaming concert broadcasts. Given Jay-Z's willingness to work creatively with sponsors and the involvement of YouTube in live streaming, advertisers should become increasingly comfortable with sponsoring such content.

More:

• American Music Festivals Outperform With Sellout Stalwarts And Strong Niche Growth
• IROCKE Launches Live Streaming Concert Hub
• Music Festivals Profit From Cultural Shifts To Quality Topped Off With Luxury

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/App.net) blogs about music crowdfunding at Crowdfunding For Musicians (@CrowdfundingM). To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.