As the coronavirus pandemic continues, hundreds of performances around the world have been cancelled or postponed – but these musicians have found another way to spread joy…
As the COVID-19 crisis continues to unfold, many musicians under quarantine are gathering together to play (and sing) their favourite pieces online instead.
From peaceful springtime songs to energetic Beethoven flash mobs, here are just some of the clips that are helping to lift people’s spirits.
We gasped the other day when it emerged that SXSW didn’t have an insurance policy that would cover cancellation due to “communicable diseases, viruses, and pandemics” – like the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). If that was the shot, here’s the chaser: it appears that both SXSW and the also-canceled Ultra Music Festival will not be refunding people who’d bought tickets for this year’s events.
An email sent to SXSW ticketholders stated that “SXSW has to rely on the registration terms you agreed to when you purchased your credential, which acknowledge that SXSW will not issue refunds”. It noted that 2020 badge purchasers can “defer their registration to 2021, 2022, or 2023, with additional benefits that we will update you on as soon as possible”. Ultra Music Festival in Miami is adopting a similar approach: an email made no mention of refunds according to the Miami Herald, but instead said: “all tickets purchased will, of course, remain valid and will be honored at either the 2021 or 2022 Ultra Miami event, at your option”.
The financial impact of the cancellations, which has already been talked about a lot in terms of local businesses in Austin and Miami as well as the artists who were due to perform, is now also trickling down to the music fans (and in SXSW’s case, startups and industry folk) who’d bought tickets. Oh, and also employees in the case of the SXSW organization: it laid off a third of its full-time staff yesterday, while CEO Roland Swenson has already voiced doubt on SXSW’s ability to “carry on and do another event in 2021” in a Wall Street Journal interview. A very difficult situation when this year’s badge-buyers are being invited to defer their registration to next year.
What the click wheel taught us about listening to music “W ow,” a man said to me recently on the subway, “I haven’t seen one of those things in years.” He gestured toward the scuffed-yet-still-sleek, aluminum-colored rectangle in my hand - a 160GB sixth generation iPod Classic. I blinked for a moment.
Over the last year I have noticed less and less interaction with ads I make in Facebook. I find more interaction with organic reach and make sure we post more content driven information with a link to buy. To the point that many times if I want to turn it into an ad it is too wordy and Facebook rejects it. So I have to build out a different ad post for Facebook to approve. However in doing so I do not see much traffic or clickthroughs. Therefore have been disappointed in Facebook ads.
Now with the latest change from Facebook coming in January many of those posts we have good traffic with will be sent to less people starting next year. And I will be expected to do more ads instead. With my results already lacking with Facebook ads, I do not think it will motivate me to encourage my clients to do more Facebook ads.
Here is more news on that front. I will post more of my strategies for 2015 in the coming weeks!
This a great article about Audio and the Internet. I have pulled some excerpts that points out how we feel about promoting music and what tools we use to create the stir that we long to be viral. Read it all (notice I didn’t say listen!) at Why Audio Never Goes Viral
Cat Video Vs. The Cat’s Meow
Bianca Giaever has always been obsessed with radio. As a child, while she biked her newspaper delivery route, she listened to an iPod loaded exclusively with episodes of WBEZ’s “This American Life.” At Middlebury College, she stalked her classmates, dragging them to her dorm room to record interviews she edited into stories for the college station and smaller audiences online. “I was fully planning on working in radio,” she says. “My whole life.” That is until, the day after graduation, she became a viral video star.
When she painstakingly crafted moving audio narratives, her parents and brother listened. When she added video to her final college project, “The Scared is Scared” — a 6-year-old’s dream movie brought to life — “It just. Blew. Up.”
As the coronavirus pandemic continues, hundreds of performances around the world have been cancelled or postponed – but these musicians have found another way to spread joy…
