Live Streaming

Up to now we’ve talked about videos, community, conversations, and engagement a whole lot.

If there’s something that really represents the convergence of all of these things, it’s livestreams.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s hard to deny the potential that a livestream could carry for your music efforts.

What we’re going to do in this training is not just come up with some useful livestream ideas, but bolster those ideas with the all important goal of generating usable engagement metrics.

So, let’s consider all the elements of a livestream that allow us to generate results for a number of purposes moving forward:

Why Go Live?

Going live for no reason at all will likely result in low turnout and a lack of retention. In order to make sure our stream is valuable, let’s answer these two main questions:

  1. What does it provide for your fans?
    To help answer this question, consider the following: Are there common requests your fans have made of you, such as wanting acoustic versions of your songs, wanting to hear certain covers, wanting to see jams/freestyles, interest in the “making of” process, curiosity about your non-musical interests, etc?

  2. What can you gain from the attendance/engagement?
    Some common benefits to you are: Nurturing your fanbase to ensure conversion down the funnel, gathering qualitative data through one-on-one interactions with fans, discovering your fan-favorite songs, creating (eventual) sales, developing a highly nurtured education or permission segment in your audience, increasing organic reach.

The Livestream

Once you know how the livestream will benefit your fans and how it will potentially benefit you, we can hone in on what we will do for our livestream. You may have the conception that there is one way to do a livestream - turn on IG live, and play some acoustic covers, right? There are so many other ways to stream, especially in ways that can result in data and nurturing! Here are some ideas.

  1. Q&A w/ Fans
    Collect a series of questions ahead of time through a form, FB post, IG Story (etc) and answer them live on the stream.

  2. Call-In Show
    Use software like Ecamm Live to set up a stream that allows fans to call in through a phone or a video chat to ask questions or address a given topic.

  3. Play Games w/ Fans
    Host a fans-only game room or party on one of your favorite computer/video games and livestream your playthrough.

  4. Let’s Play Streams
    Play through one of your favorite video games while addressing fan questions/interacting along the way

  5. Concert (w/ Requests)
    Prepare a well-curated setlist and live rig, or set up a form to take requests that you can fulfill in real time.

  6. Live Podcast/Interviews
    Find a relevant guest that your fans will get a kick out of and have an hour long livestream conversation with them - post the recording later as a podcast for added nurturing content!

  7. Songwriting/Creation (w/ Fan Input)
    Start a series where you use livestreams to slowly create a song. Each step of the way you can consult fan ideas. Ie, “what should this song be about? Should I start with drums, bass, guitar, or vocals? What style vocal should I try to create?”

  8. Unveiling a New ‘Thing’
    If you ever have a new album, a new merch item, or a new feature on your website - use a livestream to show it off and take questions about it! This can also act as a “First access” moment for those attending.

Data Capture

You know why you’re doing the stream, and you know how you’re going to do it. Awesome. However, there is one more layer to this that we’d be remiss to ignore - gathering data from the engagement we generate on this stream.

We will be going over qualitative data in the next batch of videos - so do not yet worry about HOW you can set up tools to gather data. For now, let’s just brainstorm the possible data we can gather through a certain type of livestream. Here is a brainstorming sheet that you may use to help you design your best livestream ideas. Hold onto these as you move into the next batch of videos - THEN you’ll start to see how you can execute on these.

Create a Copy of The Livestream Brainstorm Sheet

Awesome. I think we’ve really left no stone unturned for our future livestream endeavors, so now I think we’ve done tons of good work with how we can create all sorts of fan engagement. Let’s move onto the next batch of videos where we’ll be discussing how we can convert all of that engagement into useful data!