By Brian Parker

With soaring ticket prices and dedicated venues in major cities, music fans often miss out on experiencing their favorite artists’ live performances. Enter EVNTLIVE, an innovative digital venue that broadcasts HD concerts to your computer or mobile devices. Not only does EVNTLIVE offer high-quality streams of live and on-demand concerts, it also allows fans to customize their experiences, controlling camera angles, chatting with other concertgoers, and accessing exclusive content like backstage interviews and behind-the-scenes footage.

Though EVNTLIVE is technically still in its beta stage, it has already broadcast several concerts in the last few months since launching, featuring Bon Jovi, Wale, and The Lumineers, and the platform has been praised by the music and tech industries alike.

We spoke with Co-Founder & CMO David Carrico and CEO Judy Estrin last February (see that interview here) and caught up with Carrico yesterday about EVNTLIVE’s proprietary social features, the process of putting on a show, and what to anticipate for the future of the digital concert experience.

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SoundCtrl: How long has EVNTLIVE been up and running? How many concerts have you now broadcast?

David Carrico: We launched on April 15 2013, so we’ve been up and running for a little over four months now. We’ve broadcast about fifteen to sixteen shows in the last few months.

SC: In our last interview, you stated that EVNTLIVE wasn’t intended to replace a live concert experience. How does the platform bring in some of the elements of the highly social and communal atmosphere of a concert?

DC: The analogy that I like to use is that we know that being at a show is not a replaceable experience, but we do like to take the digital features that we have to make it as much like being at a show as possible. So for us that means while shows are being broadcast on EVNTLIVE.com, users are able to talk to each other using our own chat mechanism about what they’re watching during the show. Users are able to select their own camera angle, so in addition to the live directed feed they can watch one of the artists, whether it be the guitarist or the drummer, or the DJ cam or the crowd cam. Through iTunes, users are able to download music by the artist they’re watching without leaving the page, they’re able to read up more about the artist, and perhaps watch all-access backstage interviews or extra content that we’ve shot related to the artist or the story behind the show.

SC: What kind of technical specifications are required to have a concert streamed in terms of video and audio? How do you go about setting up the recording and streaming of EVNTLIVE events?

DC: Everything we do is incredibly high-end–we like to think of ourselves as a curated digital venue in the sense that we’re only looking at four to six shows a month. The majority of shows we’re doing are six to ten camera HD broadcast television-quality shoots. A lot of planning goes into camera placement and live direction of shows so they’re really the highest quality possible.

SC: Do those features carry over to EVNTLIVE on the iPhone or iPad?

DC: We don’t have native apps yet, but we will be releasing them. Right now the mobile and tablet versions are all HTML5, so you can watch on your cell phone, you can watch on your tablet, you can watch on your computer, and the content is the same on all the devices.

SC: Are you broadcasting primarily from a specific location, or are the concerts worldwide?

DC: The majority of shows we’ve broadcast have been in the United States but we’re talking about shows in the UK and other countries as well. And we’re always streaming those shows internationally, regardless of where they’re taking place.

SC: Will a breaking artist have smaller-scale options within EVNTLIVE where they can gain and grow fans?

DC: Perhaps. At this point however, EVNTLIVE is focused on bringing artists that are already incredibly popular to an event broader audience. There are so many people living in places around the world that a major artist simply won’t tour, since an artist can only tour so many dates a year. Yet there are so many fans internationally. So our goal is to give people who couldn’t make it to the show for whatever reason, be it financial, geographic, the opportunity to see their favorite bands and festivals.

SC: What is the pricing plan or subscription?

DC: At this time all the live webcasts are free. We have the option to offer pay-per-view webcasts but the idea of the business model going forward will be to partner with brands to have some integration in the webcast to help drive revenue for the artist.

SC: Are your relationships with the artists through booking agencies and record labels?

DC: Our relationships extend to agents, managers, and record labels. Typically to do a webcast, all of those parties need to buy in and be interested in participating. 

SC: You mentioned in the last interview that 3D would be a possibility for the future. Are they any plans you have to use new technologies to bring together artists’ fans in a live community setting?

DC: We have ideas about how we could experiment with translating the experience of EVNTLIVE in different ways. One of the things we’ve been interested in looking into in the future is that there are sports bars–why couldn’t there be concert bars? Why couldn’t there be places where people could congregate remotely to enjoy a show if they couldn’t be there across the world? So there are certainly lots of physical opportunities and social opportunities, as well as people just being able to enjoy from their tablets or smartphones in their living rooms.

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