Live Video + NYC = Geoff Golberg
Yesterday I caught up with Geoff Golberg, NYC's live video expert. If you have been following me for more than a year now you know I love how live video is changing the world. Geoff loves it too.
Yesterday I caught up with Geoff Golberg, NYC's live video expert. If you have been following me for more than a year now you know I love how live video is changing the world. Geoff loves it too. So much so that his work with live video over the last year got him nominated as Periscoper of the Year at the Shorty Awards right alongside other popular Scopers such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Tom Green and more.
So yesterday after some coffee and lunch we hit the streets of New York City armed with our smartphones and some live streaming apps in search of some great content to stream live. After all;
"Content Is King" - Bill Gates
And content is also now fleeting. Both Periscope and Snapchat disappear after 24 hours. So before it is gone, go right now and quickly watch what we were up too around New York City. Here are the links to our profiles on the following social networks:
Geoff's:
Kevin's:
I wanted to share some of the insightful takeaways from hanging our afternoon of live video streaming. First off as mentioned, content is actually king. Unlike other forms of media, with live video streaming the content has to be happening right now for you to film it and broadcast it simultaneously. You can't record it and edit later. Luckily living in NYC means that finding live content is not much of an issue. Second, a strong cell signal and wifi are a must! Before going live, it was important to take a moment and ensure that you had a strong data connection. If you don't then your audience quickly loses interest and leaves your pixilated low quality stream. Without strong data you mine as well go home. Lastly, you need to post a lot! Posting once and awhile is not enough to build an actual audience.
I was impressed to see the community that Geoff had build and how engaged his followers were once he went live on Periscope or he Snapchatted to his story. I can't wait to see how the evolution of live video continues in 2016 or how Geoff further explores it with his audiences.
Some Thoughts On Tidal And Kanye
I love Spotify. I became a user in England about a year before anyone in the United States even had access to the service. I have been a paid user ever since. Last year two new popular services came about. Apple Music and Tidal.
I love Spotify. I became a user in England about a year before anyone in the United States even had access to the service. I have been a paid user ever since.
Last year two new popular services came about. Apple Music and Tidal. In regards to the first, after seeing how Apple butchered my existing Music library on my iPhone with iOS 9 I have yet to try Apple Music. As for the second service, Tidal came along in the uniquest of ways.
Mimicking the founding fathers signing the Declaration of Independence, Tidal lined up several Artists on a stage and had each of them sign the companies constitution. It was meant to be symbolically powerful but it didn't seem like the music industry revolution as it was intended. It was missing something.
The Tidal Declaration came across as "tech ignorant". If that isn't a term yet, I'm coining it now. While already successful artists can build a walled garden around exclusivity of future releases, there is much more to building a successful product then simply access to exclusivity.
A year later that core thesis is being put the test. Exclusive album releases by Rihanna most recently and this week by Kanye West with his new album "The Life Of Pablo".
And since declaring this his album a Tidal exclusive it has been pirated over half a million times. For a man who is supposedly $53 million dollars in "debt", I am curious as the amount of money that a Tidal exclusive release leaves on the table from other potential platforms and CD releases. So a year later after Tidal's big release here we are. I didn't want to. I really didn't. But after seeing Tidal rise in the app store this week I have downloaded the app. I am currently listening to Kanye West's "The Life Of Pablo" in HiFi. Here are my thoughts in no particular order.
When I left iTunes for Spotify it was because I could listen to any song I could think of on the spot. Instant streaming was a exponential increase in value over paying per song in iTunes and from what people have told me it was easier than downloading an album. I signed up for premium Spotify shortly thereafter to remove all commercials. I used both for a bit, as I had spent years building my iTunes library, but eventually I fully switched to Spotify. Years later I now have that same vested interested in my Spotify library of saved songs and playlists as I once had with iTunes.
Tidal's high quality HiFi music quality is not enough for me to make the switch though. Album exclusivity is not enough for me switch either. The album has been dying for awhile now and society is moving toward a constant release of singles every few months. Playlists are replacing the album. The value increase over my existing preference is simply not yet high enough. Lastly, "The Life Of Pablo" is an interesting album to say the least. I think I prefer Dr. West though over the new Ultra Light Beam of Yeezus. To end my mostly skeptical thoughts of Tidal on a positive note though, is that If there is one person who can make sense of Tidal perhaps it's the one currently Watching The Throne.
What Does Periscope’s Live Mobile Streaming Mean To Media
This week I ran into a dilemma at the intersection of media and technology. In the last flew weeks we have got some amazing new technology in the live mobile streaming space.
This week I ran into a dilemma at the intersection of media and technology. In the last flew weeks we have got some amazing new technology in the live mobile streaming space. Meerkatand Twitter owned Periscope. The mobile app live streaming these apps enable feels really new and exciting. It reminds of when we first heard about Twitter. Not surprisingly though, just like when social media was new and we had to have a national conversation about its impacts on society, it is time to do so once again with this new technology.
If you know me then you know I love early adopting and testing new technologies. I am still optimistically waiting for the Google Glass comeback in a few years time. I also run a website or two. One of them beingTheHerdReport.com. The team and I played with both Meerkat and Periscope on our personal accounts recently. Afterword our next thought was how incredibly cool it would be to use them while covering live events. Obviously this technology would be a perfect fit to use with The Herd Report. The technology gives us, the underdog, the ability to be a lot closer to being on the same level as those incumbents with expensive TV broadcast cameras. Obviously it makes sense for us to use these new apps. Then something happened. We recoiled.
We were afraid. Afraid that the giants whose shoulders we stand on, those teams we love, constantly cover, and promote might get upset we were live streaming. We love working with them so obviously we started to think more in depth about this. After all, we constantly hear stories in the news about piracy. So we wanted to make sure we wouldn’t upset anyone and this lead us to the question: At a live event, specifically in this case sports event, who owns the actual event itself? I started researching.
I tried to initially look into this by researching how fan created media that is not live is treated. Then to see if the fact that something is now happening live change how we should treat it? This is what I found.
“Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.”
Keep in mind I am not a lawyer and this is just my basic current understanding of this confusing new space after some little research. The key word in the above definition of copyright is “fixed”. This is important because it creates a big distinction. For example, an event like a broadway musical, concert, ballet, or other theatrical performance has every movement staged by the author and is therefore “fixed”. This means the copyright lies on the events unfolding on the stage itself.
In the case of sports events though, the events are always random play by play and therefore are not fixed. Meaning the copyright does not lie with the actual event itself. In the case of sports events it turns out that it is actually the broadcasts of the event that is copyrightable. The unique combination of choreographed angles, on screen graphics, announcers, etc is what makes the live broadcast a fixed piece of copyrightable art. Again, keep in mind I am not a lawyer so please research this for yourself and let me know in the comments if you find anything different.
So it seems, at least to the best of my current knowledge, that the fans who create their own “broadcasts” at live non-fixed sports events on their own devices with unique iPhone camera angles and use their own voice as commentary, etc, would own that copyrightable content. Now keep in mind this is according to this definition of copyright law stated above. As for what abilities you waive when you purchase a ticket to a sports event or enter a stadium I am not sure and it probably varies venue to venue.
St. Peters Square in 2005 vs 2013.
My intention today is not to give a definitive answer to the questions I raised though. I am not sure there is one as this new technology is so new. More so my intent is to start the conversation about how this new technology will be treated. Why? Because I find all this incredibly new, interesting, and just plain old exciting. I can’t wait to see how live mobile streaming reaches its full potential.
Please let me know on Twitter, Periscope, or in the comments below if you know or hear of anything further. Looking forward to the discussion. Let’s start the conversation.