NEW PLATFORM: From the comfort of home, performing artistes like Carlton Braganza (in pic) are reaching out to... Read More

With concerts and festivals cancelled, musicians are going on tour on social media but can livestreaming be the future for the music industry ?

It was his fourth day in quarantine . In the morning, he played an online word game. In the afternoon, he video-called friends. By evening, he headed to the balcony for a performance of ‘Covid of the County’ — a parody of Kenny Rogers’ ‘Coward of the County’ that he wrote and sang while staring down a webcam and playing to his virtual fans.

On another night like this, Carlton Braganza, a singer and restaurateur from Bangalore, would have found himself in the frenetic buzz of a live gig. But post-lockdown, performing artistes — musicians, singers, standup comics, slam poets, illusionists and cultural institutions — are touring social media and performing live from the safety of their homes.

Braganza was in the midst of a 12-city tour when Covid-19 pulled the plug. “I’ve never sat still in decades. And although it feels a little awkward staring at myself on a screen while playing in an empty room, it’s bringing joy to me and others,” says Braganza whose nightly “pyjama and drinks jukebox sessions” brings in a virtual audience of 700 to 1,200 spanning Mumbai to Melbourne.

If Chris Martin and John Legend were the first ones to step into the void with a live concert streaming out of their homes, back home guitarist Warren Mendonsa of Blackstratblues was one of the first to take his stratocaster to his virtual fans with a series of living room jams. Several others followed.

Singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad , whose first ever show in Nepal this month was gutted by the virus, rose like a phoenix in his home studio in Delhi on Day One of the lockdown, spinning out about a dozen of his songs on guitar and keys. Perched a few feet away from a webcam and a microphone, in those 30 minutes Kuhad had worked the virtual room to perform to 50,000 listeners for ‘Live from HQ’, an eight-show series featuring popular artistes who will go live from their social networking page every night until April. “The largest crowd I’ve had at a solo physical concert is about 9,000. While it was weird doing this alone in silence where I couldn’t see anyone, it also felt personal and homey,” says Kuhad.

These livestreamed sessions are serving as a trial for concerts to migrate online in the future. Big Bad Wolf, the entertainment company that put ‘Live from HQ’ together, is among a handful of artiste and event management companies trying to make the most of this virtual connectedness and dipping into the online-only audience to see if there’s potential.

“It was imperative to not look at it as a time to sit back and wonder what is next; but continue doing what we do in a different setting,” says Pallavi Gulani of Big Bad Wolf, adding: “While money is not our focus right now, people are already used to consuming content online and paying for a show they attend. This could simply be the coming together of both.”

Deepak Gopalakrishnan, a former content and marketing professional for music and event management companies who recently helped compile a digital spreadsheet of these drawing room concerts being livestreamed, sees new models for monetisation. “Crises bring panic, followed by innovation, and you get to see the potential, viability and patronage in a new trajectory of live performance. Whether it’ll last beyond the current constraints will depend on how event promoters and artiste managers adapt and find revenue sources,” he says.

Mini concerts shared exclusively via online channels are already helping raise funds. Chennai-based Carnatic singer TM Krishna, for instance, has organised a solo livestream concert on March 29 priced at Rs 1,500. The proceeds are meant to go towards supporting artistes displaced financially by the pandemic.

But these stay-at-home gigs cannot make up for the scale of lost income. Sanjoy Roy, president of Events and Entertainment Management Association , an apex industry body that recently organised a nine-hour digital festival of #StayAtHome concerts on the day of the Janta Curfew, estimates damages worth Rs 3,000 crore for the first two months, based on a pan-India survey of event cancellations before the lockdown.

Meanwhile, artistes like Kuhad and Braganza are determined that the show must go on. “It’s about community building, giving back, and making the most of solitude that is very conducive to creativity,” says Kuhad. “I’m going to do this until we can go out again,” adds Braganza.

