Pros and Cons of Live Streaming Your Gig

Live streaming is a great way to allow fans to see your gig when they can’t attend in person due to scheduling issues or not being in the vicinity. But it can also prevent people from attending in person if they are able to view the show without leaving home. This doesn’t help you fill the seats at the venue. So, we’ll talk about the delicate balance of how, when, and where to make use of live streaming.

For reference, this author has multi camera video switchers, pro cameras, and years of production experience for both video and audio. I’ve produced shows that were live streamed using dual bonded wi-fi modems to broadcast from the city streets. Believe me, doing a professional live stream is very involved with both time, money and equipment. This is not something a band can easily do on their own. However, most of us have a smartphone and have the ability to live stream to YouTube or other social media platforms. We won’t get into the “how to” here, but just touch on a few basic “need to know” tips.

I have been approached to play a venue with my band with the benefit of the show being live streamed. Of course, it was nothing more than a single smartphone on a stand. While that will work, it leaves much to be desired from the viewer watching on another smart phone. So, if you plan to live stream a gig, here are some things to consider.

1. Don’t leave the phone on a stand 30 ft back from the stage. It will get very boring visually. Have a friend or family member hand hold the phone and it might be best to invest in a gimbal or stabilizer. Jerky and shaky video will really turn people off. Have your friend provide camera movement by doing close ups of the band members and show a positive crowd reaction. Use this live stream to make the gig look fun rather than simply show a static camera view. The goal is to get people to attend the next gig if they see everyone is having fun in the live stream.
2. Don’t live stream if the lighting on stage is bad or if there is no crowd. Some gigs are just not ideal to live stream. Promote the stream if you know there will be a good crowd and there is plenty of light on the stage. A dark video isn’t going to be watched.
3. Test your smartphone’s upload bandwidth. Your cellular account is always going to provide less bandwidth for uploads. Limited upload bandwidth combined with a busy area where there may be hundreds of phones connecting to the same cell tower can spell disaster for a live stream from a phone. If the venue offers wi-fi, test their upload speed and use whichever is best. Blocky and frozen streams will result from congested bandwidth.
4. Expect less than perfect quality. Streaming from a phone is reliant on the cellular or wi-fi upload bandwidth to be adequate. But the truth is a high-quality audio and video stream exceeds our upload bandwidth. So, you may be limited to 720p resolution or less with a highly compressed image and audio that isn’t great either. A professional stream uses multiple wi-fi connections bonded together and sends to a cloud service to catch the stream in high quality for distribution to YouTube or a Social Media account. There is often a delay, so the stream is seen a few seconds later, but this is how a high-quality stream is done. Now YouTube and Facebook do employ servers to catch your stream but if your phone’s upload bandwidth can’t handle the best quality video and audio, the quality is auto scaled down to make it work. So, your phone is the point of the bottleneck and a high-quality stream is not always possible.
5. Audio quality. You can buy a high-quality microphone to connect to your smartphone. This can improve the audio in a live stream. However, test your audio results first as a microphone may not help if your bandwidth is lacking. The audio quality will end up diminished anyway if bandwidth is lacking.
6. If you are consistently getting good quality streams you can get an audio interface for your phone so you can feed audio from the sound system into the phone. Again, test for this as you will want the mix to sound good. Simply record your sound check and play back the video and listen with headphones.

With the appropriate venue, and a friend to help, you can make use of live streaming to promote your gigs and attract people to attend. Don’t promote the stream as an alternative to attending. You could even talk directly to the home viewers and invite them to come out. We have some great technology to help us promote our gigs. Use it wisely.

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