071 – The Rise of Live Streaming – with John Petrocelli of Bulldog Digital Media

Live streaming is growing faster than ever. Are you taking advantage of it? In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, John Petrocelli of Bulldog Digital Media reveals what you can do to unleash the full potential of live streaming in your business or career. Download the PDF Transcription Podcast Highlights: 00:14 – Live streaming is growing fast 00:33 – Introductions 00:41 – What is Bulldog Digital Media? 01:27 – The quality of content you can now stream 02:23 – Why is the live streaming market growing at the rate it is? 04:48 – What is the “experience economy?” 07:15 – How does live streaming transform a business or artist’s career? 10:47 – How can people execute at a high level when live streaming? 12:09 – How can the average musician leverage live streaming? 14:16 – The connection between music festivals and live streaming 18:05 – What are some of the biggest struggles you’ve encountered as an entrepreneur? 21:44 – What are some of the biggest victories you’ve experienced as an entrepreneur? 25:07 – What books, blogs, and podcasts have inspired you? 27:04 – What tools and apps are you using to run your business? 32:37 – Is there anything else we should have covered? 35:04 – Final thoughts Transcription: David Andrew Wiebe: Live streaming is growing fast. “How fast?”, you might ask. According to Stretch Internet, internet audiences are viewing more live content than ever before. 81% viewed more in 2016 than they did in 2015. In this interview, you're going to learn more about live streaming. Let's dive right in. Today I'm chatting with CEO of Bulldog Digital Media, John Petrocelli. Welcome to the show John. John Petrocelli: Hey, David. Thanks for having me. David: For those who don't know, what is Bulldog Digital Media? John: We are a live streaming agency and strategy company. Also, billed as the world's first live streaming agency and most experienced. What that really translates to is we're very focused on premium live experiences and bringing them to life on connected devices for all stakeholders, brands, artists, promoters, viewers, you know, you name it. That's now become a kind of an interesting industry. Our core emphasis in that world is on music, you know performances, festivals, concerts, etcetera. David: Now, live streaming is something that has been around for quite a while, but the quality with which you can now broadcast and distribute content has changed quite a bit in the last 10 – 20 years, right? John: It has. That's an understatement. I've been doing this, it seems like forever. In the last several years the landscape has completely transformed, and now you're able to have a near broadcast experience on almost any connected device, which this wasn't really the case several years ago. David: That's fantastic. And of course, there's a proliferation of social media platforms and Facebook Live and things like that that people are now really getting into, so it makes sense that the quality would only be elevated, and people would continue to engage with that type of content. Why is the live streaming market growing at the rate that it is? John: It's a great question. My team and I have kind of lived through this period where it was, you know, early on education and a lot of experimentation to now full on growth mode. I think the market itself kind of roared to life and transformed when Facebook not only explored live streaming, then they began to prioritize it. It's Mark Zuckerberg's, one of his passion points at his company. And then they publicly started to articulate that people are watching live video on the platform three times longer than "non-live". That very much changed the market for sure. I think you're seeing the same strategy evolving at Twitter. They are really pinning their future on the kind of combination of live video with their social platform. Moreover, I think the world that we're living in today is really now largely becoming an experience economy or people value experience is far more than buying a watch, or a house, or a car. There's this big interest in attending things like concerts and festivals and performances. That's a big factor, but what's also driving this is kind of this dual phenomenon of a massive amount of connected devices entering the market. I think the prediction is another several billion devices will get connected between now and 2020. And to your point, you've got this explosion of social media platforms, so it's interesting now even though we live in a kind of connected world. The true irony now is people want to have real-time collaborative kind of participatory discussions. What's also adding to all of this is the quality of video, if you will, on a smartphone is now near television-like quality. All of those things have kind of created almost a perfect storm and that's what we're seeing unfolding. David: One thing you said there that I think is key and I want people to make sure they get this point is that live streaming is driving more engagement than other types of content. That's something that people should definitely be aware of. Live streaming is driving more engagement than other types of content online.Share on X The other thing that I loved, and I was going to ask about this anyway, is that term "experience economy". When I came across that, I was sort of chuckling to myself. I'm sure I didn't come up with it, but I've been saying this about business for a while, that it needs to be an experience business. It can't just be a business, especially in a field with a lot of competitors. If you get into it, how do you separate yourself? I think it's by offering valuable experiences, right? So, what is the experience economy? John: I started to follow a lot of Michael Luppino’s comments, and a lot of things that he would say to the media. I think the music promoters of today are the best reflection of that. These people are creating these immensely informative and exciting –  you could say sensory experiences – at these festivals. So, it's not just these incredible lineups of artists that they've curated. It's food, fashion, art, culture, learning, causes. I mean what you can experience there is pretty phenomenal. That's why we're seeing a massive interest by the consumer to attend and experience. You're seeing your ticket inventory sell pretty quickly. The big festivals tend to sell out before they announce the full lineup. Several festivals have gone to back-to-back weekends. A property like Lollapalooza is now programmed. Not only the Temple shows in Chicago, but it's Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paris, Berlin, etcetera. I think when we say experience economy that has a lot to do with it. I think you're also seeing artists, tours, you know, big artists paired up with each other going out on tour together. A lot of interesting things can happen there. I think the world… Again, if you look through this through the lens of the millennial consumer – that's now I think 77 million people – their interest is let's have an experience versus let's go buy a material possession. I think it all kind of falls into that realm. But what we've seen is the music world is kind of the bellwether there, and what's happening with the festivals, the concerts, and the performances are kind of the driver behind the whole business. Millennials want experiences, not material possessions.Share on X David: In your experience, what sort of transformation can artists or business expect when they take their business from maybe something that's a little more flat and a little less experiential to then incorporating something like live streaming? What's sort of the average case study? John: I think the most exciting aspect of live streaming is engagements and executing experience. I would say best practice which is what we're focused on, is really transforming the viewer into a participant. It's not putting up a webcam and filming a DJ, or a band, or a performance. It's making a very rich and highly engaging digital broadcast. It's the next best thing to physically being there at the festival, the venue, the club, the arena, the lounge, etcetera. That's where we see a lot of interest, right? If you could have someone tune in for 10, 20, 30, 40, 60 minutes, that's a big win for everybody. Especially Madison app who is now really struggling with how do I connect authentically with the consumer, but more importantly, how can I get their attention, and how can I drive engagements. What I mean by some of those things is we've learned along the way as a live streaming provider – how do we do that? The live video player in and of itself has to load on the consumer device in the first three seconds, or we lose 20% of the audience. In addition, my team pioneered in the multi kind of channel, multi camera experience. We want to get away from the traditional broadcaster kind of forced television programming. In the streaming world, we can deliver a multi camera or multichannel experience, so you can switch from a stage at a festival or perspective at a concert. So, now the viewer is curating their viewing experience. We're also doing this at a high-quality video production. The other, I would say equally as important, is the ability to allow the viewer to have a conversation and collaborative participatory dialogue around what they're viewing. Having done a lot of this -- I moved YouTube into this market. We had tools. We learned that sometimes the comments and the conversation, or I'll say oftentimes are – they're offensive, they're not related to the video, they're taking away… The conversation is just not germane to the performance or the artists. So, we've created, or we found tools that would aggregate the conversation but more importantly curate it. So, now that social stream is completely related to videos....