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Margo Price at Brooklyn Bowl NashvillePhoto: Lauren Napier
In this year of almost no in-person shows, musicians, venues and fans have done their level best to address both the economic hardship and the numbing boredom by staging streaming concerts. The experience hasn’t been without its growing pains, but several different approaches have developed in the nine months since lockdowns began, and each has shown its merits.
The most intimate, interactive streams have come live and direct from artists’ bedrooms and rehearsal spaces. Viewers interact directly in the chat panels — a throwback to chat rooms of the ’90s — and tip via Venmo or PayPal. Though sometimes compromised by spotty picture quality and intermittent buffering, these streams give artists a way to workshop new material and maintain a connection with their fans, while audiences get a unique window into where and how the music gets created. Like a pass-the-hat situation at a house show, however, they’re not typically lucrative, especially if they’re streaming for free on social media, YouTube or Twitch.