VEVO and YouTube have taken another step to establish themselves in the online music space by announcing a partnership with American Express to launch a series of live-streamed concerts, “Unstaged: An Original Series from American Express.”
The five-concert series kicks off on August 5 with a performance by Arcade Fire at Madison Square Garden in New York. The concert coincides with the release of Arcade Fire’s new album, The Suburbs (which comes out August 3). Other performances will include The Roots and John Legend (both of which also have new albums this year).
This isn’t the first time that VEVO and YouTube have live streamed a concert with American Express — earlier this year Alicia Keys rocked out via the video site, as did Brooklyn’s The National. Actually, according to reps at VEVO, the success of The National live stream contributed to American Express’s decision to partner with VEVO and YouTube again for the concert series.
As you may recall, The National’s latest album, High Violet, leaked onto the web back in April, after which they streamed it on The New York Times’s website. That publicity, coupled with the live-streamed concert in May, (not to mention their growing popularity), may have contributed to their album’s success; they came in at number three on the Billboard Top 200 chart after one week of sales.
Sales aside, the show was a major undertaking for VEVO, YouTube and Co. Perhaps most notably, the whole webcast was directed by acclaimed filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back, Monterey Pop) and Chris Hegedus (the Oscar-nominated The War Room, the upcoming Kings of Pastry). You can check the director’s cut at VEVO’s website.
In the meantime, I’m just going to embed the teaser that came out before the concert, which is done in the style of that famed Bob Dylan cue card sequence from Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back. (‘Cause it’s cool and now I have an excuse to.)
This time around, the concert series will also feature the handiwork of several acclaimed directors, as well as a few other social media components, including “Choose Your Cam,” which will let the audience control their viewing experience by switching between the director’s stream and the second camera. Thusly, you can check out everything from front row footage to backstage goings-ons. There’s also “Digital Happenings,” which let artists collaborate with the online audience. During the Arcade Fire show, fans can send in pics of their own suburbs, which might be featured on stage during the performance (remember, the album is called The Suburbs). Surprise guests are also on the horizon.
As we reported yesterday with the launch of YouTube’s new music page, it seems that the video-sharing site and VEVO are really trying to carve out a competitive space for themselves in the online music realm. With the new music page, the duo was taking a crack at music discovery — this venture, though, seems like a direct hit on MySpace. MySpace, which has been doing live streams since early 2008, frequently features live concerts and events — such as Secret Shows like Hot Chip’s performance in New York a few months back.
Yet again, however, we wonder how YouTube and VEVO will fare in the music space — at least as an authoritative voice of any kind. As we noted yesterday, YouTube’s audience is so wide and varied that popular jams on the video-sharing site are often incredibly mainstream/familiar — Justin Bieber’s video for “Baby” is still tops. This series also seems to rely on tried-and-true bands — many have several previous albums and are relatively well-known. Therefore, it’s easy to see what audience the series is catering toward: the widest possible, which is all well and good when you’re an Internet titan.
Still, what’s lacking here is some kind of cohesion — i.e. Why these bands? Why now? What’s the purpose of this series? We know that this is the first such venture by VEVO and YouTube, and specialization will likely come, but it would be nice to see something along the lines of “Emerging Artists Across the Country” (YouTube’s partner program for musicians offers ample fodder), and perhaps a series of concerts centered around certain genres. Still, we’ll have to see what else is up their (record) sleeves.
[img credit: hell*yeah]
More About: alicia keys, arcade-fire, john-legend, music, the-national, the-roots, vevo, web video, youtube
For more Web Video coverage:
- Follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter
- Become a Fan on Facebook
- Subscribe to the Web Video channel
- Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad