【深度】直播：后疫情时代音乐的新常态？

Original Grégoire 中传人类命运共同体研究院 2020-09-02

摘要：也许这场疫情危机带来的最大贡献就是它终于指明了音乐展示形式与时俱进的必要性，推动了音乐产业重新思考其发展是否仍要围绕以现场音乐展示为重心的形式。

Illustration 1: Live set by T3 and Step.jad recorded for the Chengdu Community Radio, April 23, 2020.

Thursday, April 23rd. It has already been dark for a couple of hours here in Vancouver, Canada, when I connect to the Internet to follow a live show from Chengdu. In China it’s 3pm and the Chengdu Community Radio invited two local artists, T3 and Step.jad, to play a livestreamed set broadcast from their Bilibili channel. With the Covid-19 pandemic expanding worldwide in the first semester of 2020, livestreaming has become a common practice for a lot of musicians that have been stuck at home too. In the scientific literature, livestreaming is being defined as ‘a broadcast video streaming service provided by web-based platoforms and mobile applications that feature synchronous and cross-modal (video, text, and image) interactivity.’ This practice is not new in the music industry but the cancellations of live performances and the massive economic loss caused by the shutdown of stages have led to an inevitable shift from offline music live shows to online music livestream. At a time where more and more countries are easing physical restrictions in the fight over Covid-19, it seems interesting to adopt a general overlook on this modern practice and to ask ourselves: is livestreaming the post-Covid-19 future for live music?

在科学文献中，“直播”被定义为：由基于网络平台和具有同步和跨模态（视频，文本和图像）交互功能的移动应用程序所提供的广播视频流媒体服务。直播在音乐产业中原本不是新鲜的行为，但是现场表演的取消和由于表演场所关闭导致的巨大的经济损失已经促使线下的现场音乐秀向线上音乐直播的形式转变成为一种必然趋势。当越来越多的国家逐渐放松对新冠疫情防控的种种人身限制时，去接受并整体审视直播这种现代化的表现形式看起来是很有趣的，那么我们也需要问问自己，直播正在成为后疫情时代音乐的新常态吗？

Illustration 2: One of the first livestreamed concert by the Rolling Stones (1994).

Livestreaming: a life before Covid-19

回溯新冠肺炎爆发前的“直播”

Music livestreaming is not a new window that just opened with the Covid-19 pandemic. Thanks to technological development, it is said that the Rolling Stones were the first major band to embrace the trend by livestreaming their show in Dallas, 1994. At that time, professionals in music already acknowledged the important role the internet could play in music promotion. This assessment hasn’t changed through the years but new platforms have emerged: YouTube live and Twitch appeared in 2011, Facebook live in 2015, Instagram live in 2016. With the world’s largest livestreaming industry (504 million users in 2019), China has developed its own platforms such as Bilibili (B站), Kuaishou (快手) and Douyin (抖音). Before the Covid-19 outbreak and the worldwide shutdown of live venues, those platforms were already used by musicians and music venues as a way to promote music and to connect with a wider audience. Livestreaming actually didn’t intend to replace live shows but offer another string of revenue by enlarging fan engagement and online reach. One successful illustration of this use is the 2019 edition of the festival Coachella that gathered more than 82 millions views online while it only welcomed 250,000 people on site.
在全世界最大的直播产业发展之时（即2019年共拥有5.04亿用户），中国已经有了自己独立的直播平台，诸如Bilibili（B站）、快手和抖音。在新冠肺炎爆发以及全球范围内关闭直播场地之前，这些直播平台已经开始被音乐人和音乐场馆用来推广音乐以及更广泛地与观众进行互动了。事实上，直播形式并没有取代现场音乐秀的趋势，而是通过扩大与粉丝的互动和线上沟通来创造出一种新的收入方式。举一个成功利用直播形式的例子，即2019年线上举办的科切拉音乐节共吸引了超过8200万次的观看量，远超过其线下场地所能容纳的25万人的数量。

Illustration 3: The Wiltern Theatre, Las Vegas, 2020.

Venues shut down and economic loss

音乐场馆的关闭和经济损失

In the first semester of 2020, music industry has been impacted worldwide. In late January, the Chinese live venues closed and music festivals were either postponed or cancelled. In Europe and in the USA, following a slow decrease in authorisations of gatherings, public venues were shut down and events cancelled around mid-March. On its website, Billboard tries to list all the major music events that have been cancelled due to Covid-19. Whether independent artists, underground venues, major arenas, mainstream rock stars or big labels, everyone has been economically impacted by this unprecedented sanitary ban on live performances. In the first trimester, 20,000 concerts have been cancelled in China generating a loss of $286million. In the United States, the live music business was supposed to generate $12.2 billion in 2020 but these expectations might be amputated by almost $9 billion. The economic outburst impacts beyond the artists themselves: security agents, merchandising sellers, crew members, roadies, independent contractors are all facing unemployment without necessarily being able to get any other revenue.
在起初的三个月里，共计2万场预计在中国举办的音乐会被取消了，造成高达2.86亿美元的损失。在美国，现场音乐表演行业在2020年的收入比原计划的122亿美元少了90亿美元。经济上的巨大损失并不仅仅影响音乐艺术家本身，由于找不到新的音乐演出场所，包括担保代理人、推销商、团队、音乐技术人员、独立承包人在内的音乐从业人员都面临着失业问题。
The cancellations of music festivals also had a wider range of consequences and endangered local economic actors that benefited from their attraction on the area.

Illustration 4: Travis Scott’s concert on Fortnite, April 23-25, 2020.

A worldwide move to

livestream platforms

转向直播平台的全球化运动

With live music forced to stop overnight, artists and venues massively turned to livestream platforms to keep engaging with their audiences. First artists to be stuck at home, Chinese musicians were naturally the first to propose quarantine livestreaming.
一夜之间现场音乐秀都被迫停止了，大量艺术家和音乐演出场馆都转向了直播平台，通过直播方式与观众进行互动。首批被困在家的中国音乐人，自然而然地成为了倡导隔离期间进行线上直播的先行者。
The Strawberry Z festival gathered seventy bands over five days on Bilibili, Taihe Music organized the "I’m fine云趴音乐周" bringing twelve hours of music everyday on Kuaishou. "Cloud disco" (云蹦迪) also invaded the Chinese livestreaming platforms with famous clubs like TAXX or One Third inviting their customers to move the party online. With the virus expanding over the world, the same pattern could be observed abroad.
当诸如“TAXX”“One Third”这些著名的中国夜店入驻直播平台后，它们邀请消费者参加线上派对，于是“云蹦迪”应运而出。随着疫情向全世界扩散，海外也出现了相同的模式。
Musicians in Europe and in America took over the Internet to propose home-concerts on live platforms like Facebook or Youtube. Websites like Bandsintwon, Shotgun and Resident Advisor gather information about all the live streaming concerts happening during the pandemic and the number of shows is gigantic: on March 25th, Bandsintown gathered information about more than 8,102 live stream events. If the majority of the artists mapped here are medium or small-scale artists (the most impacted by the impossibility to play on stage), big celebrities also tuned in like Travis Scott who gave a historic show on the videogame Fortnite, gathering over 27 million players.

Illustration 5: "Music for Hope", livestream of Andrea Bocelli in the Duomo, Milano, April 12, 2020.

Like a bridge over troubled water

忧愁河上的金桥

In uncertain times, listening to music plays an important psychological role in people’s life. As David Hesmondhalgh reminds us in "Why music matters ?", music is a very intense and emotional experience linked to the personal self. In this time where live venues around the world have been shut down and emotions cannot be expressed on stage nor in the audience, online platforms open a space where artists and music lovers can meet and support each others.
在低谷期，听音乐对抚平人们的心理情绪起着重要的作用。正如大卫·赫斯蒙达所强调的，“音乐的重要性”在于其与听音乐的人本身存在深层且情绪上的关联。在如今全世界的现场音乐秀场馆都关闭之时，情绪无法通过现场音乐形式在舞台上或者观众中得到释放，在线平台打开了另一扇窗，音乐家们和音乐爱好者可以通过这个平台沟通并互相扶持度过难关。
In her article on the livestreaming of the Seattle Symphony, Brooke Jarvis testifies how the beauty of such a moment helped her to cope with a mental breakdown: "I almost cried". The livestreaming experience, might also provide the very rare opportunity to share an intimate experience with artists stuck at home or in the comfortable environment of a recording studio.
直播能够展现艺术家们隔离在家或者在录音室的自然放松状态，非常难得地为大家提供了与他们进行更亲密的沟通交流的机会，拉近彼此的距离。
In China, "cloud disco" has been a window for the Chinese youth stuck for months inside their apartments. In Wuhan or in New York City, it has been yet another opportunity for people to dance, sing and release pressure from the disasters happening outside.

Illustration 6: An illustration of the Bilibili interactive reactions during a Strawberry Z concert.

To recreate the social experience

重建社交

With more than half of the world population forced to stay at home, livestreaming platforms also participated in bridging the social gap by providing a common and immersive experience into music. "Music [...] represents a remarkable meeting point of intimate and social realms.".
全世界有超过一半的人被迫居家隔离，直播平台同样成为了连接那些对音乐有所感悟的人之间的纽带。“音乐……代表着亲密关系和社交领域的绝佳汇合点”。
Online, people all over the planet can instantly gather and enjoy live shows. Music fans from remote areas have access to cultural content they usually can’t enjoy. In the past months in Vancouver and without leaving my sofa, I’ve been attending concerts from Chengdu (China), New Brunswick (Canada), Los Angeles (USA) and Britanny (France). Livestreaming also redefines the codes of the live experience. In his ethnographic observation of "Kadavar livestreamed concert" on Facebook live, Gérôme Guibert notes some similarities with a normal gig but also new features that only exist in this format: the concert is happening in a living room, there is no light system and everyone can see every detail of the set. A second screen with a live chat allows people in the audience to share messages with each other and cope with their social isolation. Brooke Jarvis also noted how the livestreamed format enhances interaction among the classic music audience who enjoy sending clapping emojis in the middle of an act while social norms would forbid such a behavior in a real life performance. In terms of interactivity, the Chinese platform Bilibili is actually standing out by providing the most integrated feature for audience to react in real-time thanks to "bullet-comments" (弹幕) superimposed over the video. This kind of visual commentary track "makes the events an active expression of community and social bonding, rather than just passive experiences."
就互动性而言，中国的Bilibili直播平台凭借其提供观众最全面的实时互动操作，即视频上叠加的“弹幕”功能，从而脱颖而出。这种可见其运动轨迹的评论“使直播活动成为了一种双向且活跃的群体表达和社会纽带，而不仅仅是单向的展示”。

Illustration 7: During a livestream party on Douyin, TAXX raised more than RMB700.000

A new stream of revenue

for the music ...

音乐场馆形式的新潮流

Livestreaming concerts was providing another string of revenue for music professionals before the Covid-19 outbreak but for some now it might represent the only string left. In China, where artists’ economic model relies heavily on live performances, "it has been a perfect time for creation but a lot of musicians made no money". Digital platforms enabled them to keep on working while opening a new monetary stream: audience can tip the artists, make donations and even buy merchandising online.
在新冠肺炎爆发之前，直播音乐会的形式为一些音乐专业人士提供了多重的音乐表现场所，然而现在直播音乐会可能代表着音乐展示的唯一途径。中国的艺术家们现在普遍依赖于直播形式获取收入，“现在是进行音乐创作的绝佳时机，但是许多音乐家赚不到钱”。电子平台给他们能够继续工作的机会并且提供给艺人们一条赚钱的新道路：得到观众打赏、募捐，甚至可以直播卖货。
Live venues also tuned in to let their usual customers benefit from live concerts. "As a venue, our advantage is what we currently have: the venue space, the equipment, and our tech crew". Some clubs have found a lucrative space to raise money: the two Chinese clubs TAXX and One Third respectively raised RMB 700,000 and RMB 1million during "cloud disco" parties on Douyin. This money represents a temporary fix for music venues that can finally cash in and even pay some of their staff. But it should be noticed that even if venues and musicians are severely hit by the pandemic, they often connect online performances to charities and spur their fan base to donate for hospitals, front line workers and associations linked to the pandemic.

Illustration 8: LiveXLive is an American livestreaming platform working with several musicians.

… but an uncertain

economic development

……不稳定的经济发展

While live venues remain closed in most of the countries, some limits of livestreamed events also force us to relativise its role in the post-Covid-19 era. Economically, livestreaming is far away from having covered up the losses of the earthquake experienced by the living spectacle in the past months.
现在大部分国家仍然关闭现场音乐秀场馆，直播活动的一些不足也使我们不得不去考虑其在后疫情时期的地位。从经济角度来看，直播远远无法弥补在过去几个月里由于无法进行现场活动导致的巨大损失。
If some famous Chinese clubs managed to earn good money on a couple of dates, "cloud disco" remains a promotion tool to incite clubbers to come back to the physical place once reopening allowed. For festivals and live venues, the actual livestreaming format is not as lucrative as offline events with tickets and beverages sales. The main concern for livestreaming lies in its ability to monetize such shows. Monetization can take different forms: advertisement, tips, paid entrance, subscription to a closed platform, etc.
对于直播的关注点主要在于其能够利用线上展示形式来盈利。盈利形式是多样的：广告、打赏、付费入场、平台订阅等等。
So far, it is hard to say if people will be ready to pay to access such content even if a study by Bandsintown reveals that more than 70 % of music fans on the platform are willing to pay to support streaming artists. Nevertheless the systematization of online shows also raises the question of authorship, recording and reproduction rights and still represents a big puzzle that has to be answered accordingly to the different platforms and national legal systems.

Illustration 9: How to behave behind a screen ?

Audience behaviour and

standardization of performance

观众行为与展示标准化

Another concern with the future of livestreaming lies in the core of this practice itself: the performance.
对于未来直播的另一个关注点在于其本身的核心，即表演展示。
As Gérôme Guibert reminds us, playing in an empty venue might be suitable for some music styles but not for popular music "where the bodies are meaningful, maybe crucial and where the show is also in the venue itself." The feelings of bodies, the dancing, the mixture of smells of the venues and the alcohol, the sight and the hearing altered by the lights and the sound system: those characteristics are hard or impossible to reproduce through a screen. The destruction of the unity of time and place forces the audience to readjust its behavior, from being part of a collective musical rite to a passive and potentially solitary reception.
音乐场馆所带给人们身体上的感觉、舞蹈、各种味道混合，以及酒精、被灯光和音响系统所改变的视觉和听觉：这些是很难甚至无法通过一个屏幕得到替代的。时间碎片化和场所问题使得观众被迫重新调整他们的行为，从一场充满仪式感的音乐盛典的一份子变成了独自在屏幕前收看表演的观众。

How does the livestreaming audience behave? Shall we dance or stay seated, shall we drink, sing and yell or should we adopt a peaceful watching, closer to a cinema experience? Eventually, livestreaming might represent a threat to the creation itself. Every live show is different and musicians are constantly renewing themselves in order to entertain the audience. With only a few platforms available and an increasing number of bands rushing to give livestream concerts all over the world, it is to be feared that the uniqueness of live music would be turned into a senseless mechanical reproduction. The standardization and commodification of a magical, rare and ephemeral musical moment, would be detrimental both to the less-famous artists and to the music fans. The promptness of the pandemic postponed these reflections but, like anytime when technologies develop, a reflection on the evolution of its uses will have to be done.

Conclusion

结论

Live music has always been evolving and borrowing from new technologies.
现场音乐形式一直结合新技术在与时俱进。
I can still remember the shock, when in 2012 Tupac Shakur (assassinated in 1996) appeared on the Coachella stage under the form of a hologram. Livestreaming and the performance of Travis Scott in a video game is only the evolution of such an imbrication of music and technological progress. By forcing people to stay at home and shutting down live venues, the outbreak of Covid-19 didn’t give birth to music livestreaming but reinforced the digitalization of culture and forced its agents to rethink their practice. While a generalization of livestreaming concerts seems not likely to happen when the pandemic will be under control, this tool has shown some very interesting assets that could be merged into the future of live music. Maybe, the greatest contribution this sanitary crisis had is that it finally pointed out the need for a change and forced the music industry to reconsider its center of gravity around live performances.
尽管随着疫情逐渐得到控制，直播音乐会的概念形式看起来并不会得到进一步发展，这个平台仍然展示出了一些有趣的价值点，这些都可以融入到未来现场音乐表现形式中。也许这场疫情危机带来的最大贡献就是它终于指明了与时俱进的必要性，并且它推动音乐产业重新思考其发展重心是否仍然要围绕现场音乐展示形式。
Because for most of us now, "the idea of going to a 300-cap venue and pushing through some asshole crowd of kids to pay for an $18 beer, just to stand in a corner and nod my head to some music that is never as good as the record, seems just like hell".

作者简介：Grégoire Bienvenu，中国传媒大学传播研究院博士留学生，法国籍。

译者简介：李喆，中国传媒大学人类命运共同体研究院学术秘书。

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- End -

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