Although the live music industry has had an incredibly challenging past 18 months, one silver lining of the pandemic has been the rise of digital experiences that allow artists to connect with fans more directly and in new and creative ways. Festival production and promotion company Danny Wimmer Presents (DWP) went all-in on virtual experiences while live shows were on pause, and it’s a strategy it plans to continue.
According to Maureen Valker-Barlow, EVP of Partnerships at DWP, “digital content and live broadcasting our shows has always been something that we wanted to do, but when you're doing festivals and managing a million logistics, it’s hard to think outside the lane that you're currently focused on. It was always something that was on our horizon, but we just hadn't had a chance to do it.”
When Covid hit however, it presented DWP with the opportunity to switch gears. “We were immediately faced with two questions: how do we continue to find ways to drive revenue, and then how do we stay connected to our fans and stay relevant?” explains Valker-Barlow.
DWP started its pivot to digital with Offstage, a digital content series comprising of one-on-one interviews with and intimate acoustic performances by DWP bands hosted by Head of Talent Gary Spivack.
“It wasn’t until October that we started to inch into the pay-per-view space,” says Valker-Barlow. “We launched our first pay-per-view with Corey Taylor, which was live from the Forum. At that time, everybody was kind of broadcasting from their living room with a smartphone or a laptop, which wasn’t the high-level production that DWP has a reputation for, so we didn’t want to dive into that.”
Instead, DWP produced a live performance from the Forum without an audience, so that it still felt like a “full-blown concert in your living room, with all the lights, pyro, video, and sound.” DWP has now produced 15-20 high-quality pay-per-view performances for fans to experience at home.
In addition, the company built its own livestream technology and was able to leverage its marketing database to promote these digital experiences, including a recent Anthrax livestream event. “We wanted to make sure that the product that we were putting into the marketplace ticked all the boxes that we needed,” notes Valker-Barlow. “It was just easier for us to build our own platform instead of going with somebody else's.”
Back in June, DWP announced an official partnership with streaming platform Twitch so that it could continue to engage fans online. Valker-Barlow shares, “We went through many, many iterations of what the content could look like, and what it should look like, until we got to where we are today with Space Zebra.”
“It was definitely a mutual benefit for both of us,” she continues. “Twitch wanted to be in music, and we were looking for a platform to continue to build community, talk to our fans and feed new content. And that is exactly what Twitch is. The Twitch universe is on 24/7, and it has a really special and unique way of facilitating community building. It's all about being able to communicate with and talk to our fans through another platform and being on all time.”
So far, according to Valker-Barlow, fan engagement on Twitch has been high and the response has been very positive — the channel brought in an audience of nearly 400,000 fans in its first week. Something that has been working particularly well for DWP is focusing attention on unsigned artists and becoming a platform where bands can showcase their music. “The fans just love it,” says Valker-Barlow. “They’re donating their own money and supporting these artists through all the different ways that Twitch has.”
DWP also gives an insider’s look into how music is made through its show The Writer’s Circle, hosted by hosted by Fever 333’s Jason Aalon Butler, which Valker-Barlow notes “isn’t something that's really out there at the moment on a regular and consistent basis.”
One of the things that the DWP team is learning on Twitch is how to keep the momentum going. They kicked off with a big live party from the Musicians Institute Live House in Hollywood, and they will be live broadcasting Welcome To Rockville in November, which is the last festival on its calendar for the year and which will be the first festival broadcast that DWP has ever done.
“We want to be able to reach fans all over the world, and digital is a really great avenue to help us achieve that goal,” says Valker-Barlow. “For example, we're going to be broadcasting That Space Zebra Show from every one of our shows this fall, either as more of a backstage newscast or as a more fan facing experience.
“This whole slowdown gave us a chance to go back to school and learn what to do. And now it's a tool in our toolkit that we're definitely going to keep and utilize for the future. We want to be able to deliver content to you, in your home, on your phone, live and in-person — wherever you are, we want to be there with you, and be able to deliver really great experiences.”