Yahoo and Live Nation will partner up to deliver 365 live-streamed concerts over a 12-month duration on a new Yahoo-hosted channel, as announced during Yahoo’s Newfront presentation on Monday.
With 800 million unique visitors monthly, Yahoo can leverage its collaboration with Live Nation, who has a wide spectrum of emerging and Grammy-winning artists spanning across several genres including rock, hip hop, pop, country and EDM, in order to target audiences to deliver a customized, digital concert experience. “There’ve been a lot of attempts in the past to launch events online in more of a one-off or episode nature,” explains Yahoo’s chief marketing officer Kathy Savitt. “This is the first time, at scale, where two behemoths are getting together and saying, ‘Live is the future, and we’re gonna create a daily habit for music fans.”
Savitt set late June — and “definitely by July 4” — as the launch date to kick off the daily, year-long live-stream event. The right sponsors will help support the costs behind live-streaming a concert for such a long duration (with upfront commitments reportedly in the mid-to-high seven figure range). Kellogg has already taken the spot as the first sponsor.
The partnership has been revealed following the buzz around Beyonce and Jay Z‘s On The Run stadium tour, leaving speculation as to whether the tour will be one of the first live-streamed events. Regardless, the announcement comes at the right time when the number of viewers watching live-stream concerts are increasing — already a 40% increase from 2012 to 2013, with 380 million viewers last year — with EDM online viewership showing the largest increase, according to a 2013 live stream concert industry rankings released by IROCKE, a live-stream concert guide.
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