In an age when stupid restrictions from content owners prevent you from watching what you want on the Net because you are not in the right “geographical region”, it’s great to know pop group U2 is streaming its concert from the United States live on YouTube.
If you are reading this now on a Monday afternoon in Singapore, the concert is going on live at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California – the scene of many a great concert, including my favourite ’80s band Depeche Mode.
Can you believe this:
- This is U2 and it’s free
- This is a live concert, so you are joining the 90,000+ who are watching it live at the Rose Bowl, interacting through Twitter or the comments page
- The quality is great – not your usual YouTube stuff, but well streamed and buffered to ensure smooth and sharp images
The lousy U2 fan that I am – I only liked certain albums, like Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby – I found out about the concert from friends’ live feeds on Facebook.
So, instead of getting wind of this concert from traditional media, I only logged on minutes ago because of “word of mouth” marketing. Now, I’m doing work on my PC while watching Bono on a small window on the screen!
That’s something to swallow, you Big Media monopolies. A great concert doesn’t need as much advertising and marketing as before – it sells by itself by the very people the band wants to attract: the fans.
That’s also a slap in the face for content owners still nuts about controlling the different “windows” and geographical regions that they sell content to (see how greedy the FA PL – Football Association Premier League – is in selling “exclusive content” to different regions).
True, this is U2, so they didn’t need to try that hard to get publicity. But this makes the concert even more interesting. Instead of restricting people from watching such high-profile content, the stuff is free – guaranteeing that more U2 CDs will be sold now that more people have seen them live.
Who says live concerts can’t sustain musicians when people don’t buy their CDs? Think again.
This concert has to be a watershed for the changing way content is distributed, up there with Radiohead’s giving away of their In Rainbows CD in 2007 for any price that a fan deems fit to pay (unfortunately, the band discontinued the “free” offer months after).
So, head on down to the U2 site. Vote to get your media when you want it, where you want it.
Support your musicians by watching them live and buying their music – junk the loser content firms trying their darnest to make it hard to copy a CD, or watch a music video on YouTube, for basically treating customers as thieves.
