From: Mike Caren
Re: Recordings Not Live

You hit it on the head here but you probably missed something important here.

We have a new generation and recording at home on your iPad doesn’t require collaboration. Forget finding four great musicians (let alone four great musicians who all can write/contribute), try to find four musicians/artists who can get along long enough as a group to survive. Rap groups, very few. R&B groups, there’s nothing better but where are they? Rock bands…forget the ones that reunite when they’re broke, how many good ones stay together with their original line up long enough to be spectacular? In the “me” generation, the easiest way to get along with the rest of your band is to be the rest of your band. That’s recording. With free, downloadable multi-track recording, as long as you can play a keyboard, sample, or program, you don’t need anyone else. Or you can bring in day players and get rid of them as you see fit. Most hip hop/r&b/pop artists cherry pick the tracks. Few stay loyal to their producers (who are essentially their backing band on record) in any significant way. Hell, I hear LMFAO broke up after two albums and they (A) are a duo and (B) are relatives!

I’m not saying anything wrong with recording first. I was always personally into artists on record first, live second. Also, theoretically, who wants to duplicate the process of another era? With the speed in innovation in recording software, people are going to do incredible things. There are geniuses out there that otherwise would have never had access to instruments, let alone a studio. They’re making music on every continent, in every community, and we’re going to see some really incredible recordings. Just make sure you read about their live show before you go unless you’re ok with someone just standing behind a laptop for an hour or worse, standing with four strangers who barely know their instruments that will never find a groove. Of course there can always be a LiveBand-Yelp to solve that issue…

From: Mark Cuban
Re: Concert Streaming

Right idea, wrong platform.

900k views of Coldplay would be a bad night for them on AXS.TV. That’s more than 900k viewers in one night, not 60 days, which is exactly why bands are coming to us left and right.  So are advertisers.  They love reaching an audience. They love reaching people who otherwise might not have seen their concert. I doubt people are going to channel surf to a live online concert. They will and do channel surf their TV guide and sample our concerts.  And we are getting better at this by the day

Not only do the bands get an audience, they also get the video master to release a DVD (multiple top selling concert DVDs came from our live broadcasts).

I’ve known that streaming live concerts is a great way to make people aware since we streamed the first live concerts online more than FIFTEEN years ago.  No question the online viewing experience is better today, but it’s kind of ironic how the mobile viewing experience is back to the little screens of streaming back in the day.

But wasn’t going online supposed to be all about freedom from the gatekeepers?  How is YouTube not the same as any other entertainment distributor ? They control the bandwidth. They control placement. yadda yadda.

Enter AXS.TV

We will broadcast your concerts.  We will reach an audience for you. And it will sound great coming through the speakers on your HDTV or the speakers you connected. And it will look beautiful. Looks great, sounds great.  Compare that to the experience on your phone, laptop or the ever disappearing desktop. Run it through your Roku or Boxee. We still kick their butt and btw, it kind of sucks when you try to watch the concert online and someone else in the house wants to watch Netflix or it crushes you mobile data limits

As far as the business of TV, Music used to rate too low when it was shown on analog tvs. Sounded bad, looked worse.

Those days are gone and our partners and advertisers know it too. Amex, Budweiser, Monster Cable, Nokia and more. All are on board with long term deals.  Why?

Because Live Live, our slogan is not just about concerts it’s about activation.  You think people might get excited when they tweet to their friends who are watching a live stream ? They definitely get excited when they tweet /tumblr/FB to their friends watching on TV.
Our sponsors are all using music and sponsoring concerts. Which creates more value for that branding, online exclusively or online and AXS.TV? Or exclusive AXS.TV vs an online concert ?

AXS.TV loves music, we love showing concerts. We love talking music.  We love having artists come on and perform. We want them to come on and promote. We will talk about new music and tell viewers that a single/album is being released that night and tell them to go watch. We will show artists doing great things on the stage and off.  And we will put some Lefsetz attitude out there as well. We will have people with opinions come on the shows we produce and let them speak their minds.

And yes we are going to be at festivals. Whether we broadcast them or not.

We also are not stupid. You aren’t going to see us doing weekly video countdown shows. No 100 best bodies of hip hop.  No take overs. We know the role of YouTube and Vevo and we are going to let them to continue to do their job of presenting videos in response to searches. We don’t believe they create awareness or are a discovery engine. People find or hear their music elsewhere and then search and watch on YouTube.  Vevo does discovery, YouTube doesn’t.

AXS.TV is going to be a platform for live music. As much of it as we can get.

We are going to try a lot of different things. Some will work, some won’t.

If you are a band that wants to reach an audience and activate them, we want to broadcast your concerts live.  We want to have your artists in our studio, on our shows, being interviewed, on panels, guest hosting our shows.

Send me an email Mark@AXS.TV  Let’s do this !

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