The pandemic has seen a proliferation of live streaming platforms that are aiming to bring music performances to a wider audience and allow people to experience shows even if they can’t attend in person.
Flymachine — whose name is a mashup of Superfly and [namethemachine], thanks to co-founders Rick Farman and Matt Davis, who are the co-founder of Superfly and founder of [namethemachine], respectively —is currently one of the big names in the live streaming space. The company announced a $21 million funding round in July and isn’t slowing down.
Andrew Dreskin, Flymachine co-founder and CEO, shares that one of the most important things that he and his team considered when building the platform was the ability to have a social experience and watch a performance with other people. One day during the pandemic, he suggested to a group of friends that they watch a show together.
“That's when the light bulb sort of went off for me that the thing that was missing from these virtual events, which were already very cool, was the ability to have this shared experience with other people all over the world — people that you may know, or people you may not know,” he says. “The foundation of our idea was to create social connectivity — a shared communal experience around these events.”
He continues: “One of the differences between a virtual event and an in-real-life event is that you generally go to in-real-life events with people who live within several miles of your house. But with a virtual event, you can watch with anybody, including your friends all around the country. So that was what got me got me going on this.”
In order to bring Flymachine to life, Dreskin teamed up with fellow industry veterans Farman and Davis, and many of their employees are people that they’ve worked with previously. This has been a huge advantage, as Dreskin notes, because “you don’t need to explain to them how this all works — we’ve really hit the ground running.”
Flymachine allows fans to join private rooms with their friends or public rooms, where they can meet and mingle with other fans, similar to the experience you’d have at a live concert. In addition, artists can also join rooms to interact with fans before or after the show.
While Dreskin shares that the platform experienced a slight dip in demand at the beginning of the summer as live events started to return and people experienced Zoom fatigue, he believes that the future of live events will undoubtedly be hybrid, which is a logical progression for the music industry.
“We’re about to embark on what I call the hybrid future of live events. And it’s remarkable when you think about it —look at live events relative to something like sports. Imagine if the only way you could see the New York Knicks was to go to Madison Square Garden. That's crazy talk. But that's how live events are today.”
He emphasizes that virtual events will never supplant live events, but rather are “intended to be an adjunct, because people can't always get to the venue.” On a tour with 20 or 30 dates throughout North America, for example, there are a lot of markets that are inevitably excluded.
“This opens up a huge global audience for these events,” says Dreskin. “It's additive in terms of the revenue for the event promoters and venue owners and artists. It's something that fans want, and it's going to be here to stay.”
The platform will be hosting a Portugal. The Man show on Wednesday, which is being billed as a kind of perfectly imperfect show as they get ready to go on tour: “Come see everyone’s favorite lords of Portland work out the fall tour jitters virtually on Flymachine — live from the brand new (kinda finished) Crocodile in Seattle before it opens to the public! Things are gonna be a little rough around the edges in all the best/worst ways, of course,” the event description reads.
This is another potential use case for livestreams in addition to artists livestreaming shows on their regular tour stops. “I think this is one of the ways that artists will utilize this technology moving forward,” says Dreskin. “It’s a great opportunity for an artist to demo some new material to gather feedback from people all over the country and the world, since people's tastes vary a little bit regionally. And when it comes to record release parties, instead of having a few local shows with a few thousand people, you could be reaching 500,000 or a million people by doing it online.”
While we’re not quite out of woods with Covid-19 yet, Flymachine will have staying power beyond the pandemic, and the company is preparing for that reality. “Our business was built for a post-Covid world,” explains Dreskin.
“To that end, we've done deals with several iconic, small and midsize venues in North America. Our vision is that we will stream live from these venues, but in order to do that, we need the fans to be back in the building and bands back on the road. What we're seeing is that is our venue partners have been gearing up for a September reopening — post Labor Day, things are really going to kick into high gear.”