The monetary value of live streaming virtual concerts for a major artist has been largely underutilized. While most artists are no stranger to delivering digital content, until recently they have done so across free platforms like Youtube, Vimeo, and TikTok purely for fan engagement and promotion. It’s hard to imagine any silver lining to 2020, but if there were to be one, it’s that artists, promoters, artist management, record labels, and booking agents are starting to learn the true value of properly monetizing virtual concerts and live streams. This will likely have a lasting impact on how artists engage and grow their fan base forever.
Even after venues and festivals re-open and tours come back in full force, live streaming is here to stay.
While there’s obviously value in letting fans discover and enjoy virtual concerts or live streams from home for free, this should not be exclusive to all digital content. It’s bad enough artists get paid an insulting amount for streaming their audio content on services like Spotify and Pandora. Let’s not see that trend continue with virtual concerts…
Afton Tickets Live Stream was created to put money directly into the pockets of artists and promoters. With no costs to the artist/promoter, and 100% payout of ticket sales, in-stream tips, and in-stream merch sales, our end-to-end platform is the best on the market. Our goal is to save music venues, artists and all of the players in our live events industry.
How Can I Monetize My Live Stream Content?
- Live Stream Ticket Sales.
- In-stream Tips/Donations.
- In-stream Merch Sales.
- Sponsor Placement.
- Hybrid Events:
- In-Person show + Real World/Virtual Live StreamEvents.
- Schedule your Live Stream & Choose a Platform.
Live Stream Ticket Sales
Some artists are hesitant to require a paid ticket to enter a stream or virtual concert until they make the jump and realize how much money they are leaving on the table! Most artists will make significantly more money selling tickets to a LiveStream than they ever could playing in a traditional venue. Promoters also stand to gain a better profit margin and a much higher marketing pool when they book artists for worldwide live streams.
The general rule of thumb is that the costs of the ticket should not exceed 50% of the costs the artists can command at a real-world show and that tickets should never be lower than $10.00 for a signed artist considering the fact that even unsigned artists are finding success charging $7.00 to $10.00 for a live stream ticket. You know your fans best, so price accordingly. But don’t undervalue yourself!
If you’re looking to monetize via ticket sales but are unsure how to price it, you can always go with a “pay-what-you-want” model. With Afton Tickets LiveStream you can create multiple ticket tiers. We’ve found higher donations occur if you pre-set the suggested donation tiers. Most of our clients set up their ticket tiers as follows:
LiveStream Ticket $15
LiveStream Ticket + $10 Donation $25
LiveStream Ticket + $20 Donation $35
LiveStream Ticket + $50 Donation $65
Paid content should not be the same content you are putting on free platforms, rather it should be a special experience for those willing to pay. The most successful live streams are the one’s where fans have a chance to see their favorite artist not just through a new medium, but consume content that is unique to that medium.
For example, an electric band playing an acoustic show, an album from beginning to end, taking song requests via live chat in-stream, Q&A segments, merch telethons, storytelling, or rap artists freestyling or even creating new songs in real-time about fans who are tipping or interacting in live chat.
In-Stream Tip/Donations
The most important feature in the live stream platform you choose is the ability for fans to tip or donate in-stream, without having to leave the page. Luckily Afton Tickets Live Stream offers this feature as well as 1-click tipping. The biggest downfall on the free streaming platforms is that fans have to leave the stream and go to the artist’s website or to paypal.com or venmo.com in order to tip. That will kill the amount of tips you’re going to receive.
In-stream Tips/Donations often exceed ticket revenue, especially in this moment and time where fans are dying to see original music content and support the artists they love. Even smaller artists with 200 live stream tickets sold are seeing tips in the $3,000+ range. Larger major artists cna make an insane amount of tip revenue in-stream. What we’ve noticed about in-stream tipping is that a “group think” thing occurs where one fan tips, and 3 or 10 more tips immediately follow.
Afton helps you capitalize on this by letting fans compete for rewards like merchandise, digital downloads, or post stream meet and greets. This also adds a fun dynamic to the stream, creating another differentiator from just watching an old show on youtube. Even fans that are not in the running for top tipper rewards enjoy and comment about the “battle” happening in real-time for those top tipper reward placements.
In-Stream Merch Sales
Many artists are selling merchandise during their streams, both current stock and newly curated Merch unique to the show. The fact is that there are not a lot of opportunities for artists to get their merch front and center. Some platforms allow your fans to watch the stream from your Shopify store page. But the fan experience is poor, because the page is not laid out to optimize the live stream watching experience and a small video player is stuck at the top of the store page.
At a real-world show, the merch is often tucked away in the back under a dim light or buried on an artist’s website. In-Stream merch sales puts your goods directly in-front of your stream viewers. Afton Live Stream for example, allows fans to view and buy your merch during your stream without leaving the stream.
Sponsor Placements
Whether you’re a local or touring artist or a promoter, sourcing sponsors is more often than not time well spent. Afton Live Stream allows you to source and display your title sponsor and up to 3 additional sponsors on your ticket page, and fan watch page. To take it a step further, you can choose to sell ad space during your stream by airing a brief commercial before your show begins, or during your set break. You can also use this feature to promote your own content, like a newly released album, or your upcoming tour.
Hybrid Real World/Virtual Events
It’s a simple concept really, why only limit your content to those people in driving distance to your show when you can sell tickets all over the globe? In this moment in time real-world events are far and few between, though we are seeing a surge in creative socially distanced and drive-in formats. For content like this, and when shows come back in full swing, streaming will likely be an expected line-item for any artist and/or promoter or venue.
To successfully stream your real-world show, it’s a good practice to take advantage of geo-fenced purchasing. If you’re not familiar, geo-fencing allows you to dictate who can purchase tickets to your LiveStream based on their location. Afton allows you to set a radius around a zip code to block out LiveStream sales, thus prioritizing the sale of your more lucrative real-world tickets to fans near the venue. Once your real-world show sells out, as is often the case with today’s current limited capacities, you can have the geo-fence auto removed.
With Afton’s Stripe integration, you can sell tickets and collect tips/donations, in 135+ currencies around the globe simultaneously, all while respecting multiple radius clauses for future tour dates.
Schedule Your Live Stream
While streaming is very accessible for artists, allowing them to produce their own content with little overhead and large profit margins, many promoters out there have pivoted to curating Live Stream content and virtual concerts. If you have representation, get your team to start seeking out these opportunities. Some people early on were concerned the market would be over-saturated with streaming content. But you have to remember, YOUR FANS want to see you perform. So it doesn’t matter if other acts are live streaming, when you put your live stream tickets for sale your fans are going to want to see you perform and buy a ticket.
Think about it, pre-pandemic, tours and real-world shows were “oversaturated.” But your fans still came out to see you perform anytime you came to town.
Artists can book their live streams directly with Afton. Or they can utilize their favorite Promoter which will increase the overall ticket sales volume. Record labels are setting up live stream concerts for artists on their roster. Booking Agents are starting to book the live stream shows for their artists utilizing their Promoter network. Even Artist Management is starting to take the wheel and book their artist’s live streams. Every single player in the music industry can get into live streaming. That’s how we’re going to get through this pandemic, together. Live Streaming is also going to be a significant new revenue generator once tours finally come back.
The artists, promoters, booking agents, managers, and record labels that utilize this time to hone their skills on capitalizing on live streams and marketing their live streams are the ones who will come out of COVID-19 stronger than ever before.
Choose the Right Live Stream Platform
Most live stream platforms take a cut of ticket sales. Most don’t have in-stream tipping, tip gamification, merch sales in-stream, built-in ticketing, marketing features, proper reporting, or they don’t handle your stream ingest, encoding, and stream delivery.
Afton Tickets Live Stream has it all. No costs to artist/promoter, no subscription fees, and you keep 100% of ticket sales, in-stream merch, and in-stream tips. Take a look at what our end-to-end platform can do.
Book a DEMO Here.
Meet Ryan Kintz, the visionary CEO behind Afton Tickets, Afton LiveStream, and Afton Shows. With a rich background in event organization, concert promotion, and entrepreneurial ventures, Ryan is a prominent figure in the entertainment industry.
Afton Tickets: Elevating Event Experiences
As the co-founder and CEO of Afton Tickets, Ryan serves a diverse clientele, including fairs, festivals, beer/wine/food events, and concerts of various scales, from 500 to 100,000+ attendees. His commitment to excellence shines through, providing tailored ticketing solutions that enhance event experiences and streamline ticket sales.