Case Study -- Webcasting at the House of Blues
The year 2000 has been rough on producers of streaming entertainment content, but a few have hit the mark. Over the years, the House of Blues (HOB) has been doggedly hoarding a massive cache of streaming content with proven audience appeal, and developing new ways to deliver and monetize that content.
Founded in 1992, HOB operates clubs in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, New Orleans, Myrtle Beach, Orlando and Boston. HOB also owns, operates or exclusively books 20 amphitheaters throughout the United States. The company launched its first Web site in 1994, and produced its first streaming event — Stevie Wonder, Chuck D, and the Blind Boys of Alabama live from the Sunset Strip — on Martin Luther King Day in 1995 using CUseeMe technology. In 1996, HOB and Progressive Networks (now RealNetworks), formed liveconcerts.com to webcast weekly concerts using RealAudio technology. By mid-1997, it was audio webcasting three concerts a week. HOB began regular video webcasting in September 1997, and by 1998, www.HOB.comwas launched and became the House of Blues destination on the Internet. In September 1999, using first-generation digital rights management (DRM) technology developed in concert with Microsoft, HOB presented Ziggy Marley from the Chicago club, in the first live-music, broadband, pay-per-view event on the Internet.
Technically, HOB has been ahead of the game, as well. As Nick Wild, director of technology for House of Blues Digital, notes, "People thought we were nuts five years ago to be capturing in Beta SP. They said, ‘You're doing multi-camera shoots with these expensive cameras, but when I'm watching on my computer it's at 3fps and the size of a postage stamp.' Now we don't seem so crazy."
HOB currently delivers music through the Internet in four basic forms. Live-live means audio and/or video is encoded and streamed while the live concert is in progress. This method is typically employed only for special events. Archived on-demand concerts and interviews with artists - audio, video or text-only - are offered on a rotating basis. Audio and video-single downloads culled from previously recorded concerts are available from HOB.com, as well. But simulated-live events — meaning a live concert is either recorded on videotape for later encoding and streaming, or encoded "live-to-file" while the concert is in progress but streamed at a later time — is HOB's preferred mode of delivery.
HOB typically offers simulated-live streams in a 24-hour loop. In this "near-demand" scenario, users in any time zone can view the concert from the beginning, and at a convenient time. "We feel that tuning in to something in progress is still an exciting part of the [concert experience]," Wild says.
The House of Blues is in the enviable position of controlling virtually every aspect of the webcast production process — the venue, equipment, staff and crew. Six of the seven HOB clubs maintain sufficient equipment on-site for a four-camera digital video capture (the Boston club is too small for such equipment). The Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago clubs are wired to accommodate up to eight cameras and multitrack audio. About half of the 800 to 1,000 video captures made this year by HOB originate from one of the HOB clubs, and about half of those are produced at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles — just down the road from HOB corporate headquarters. The following applies - except where noted — to the L.A. club.
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