Quarantine Concerts

A weekly livestream performance I started during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

What I Did

After live entertainment came to an immediate halt amidst the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, I joined the musicians and performers all over the world who started live streaming performances from home.

I performed covers from artists like Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, the Foo Fighters, and Elton John. In addition to covers, I performed a few of my original songs as well.

I used Main Stage to rout and process all of my audio, and OBS to get my stream out to the internet. I then sent the signal to Castr.io, which handled the re-stream and multi streaming. The performances were viewable live on Facebook Live, YouTube, and Periscope/Twitter. A couple of concerts were pre-recorded in OBS and streamed as live premieres on Facebook and YouTube.

The performances were widely successful; I played to an audience of over 2,000 fans and got to perform live music during a summer when live entertainment was few and far between.

What I Learned

Performing “live” from my basement taught me a lot about marketing and streaming technology/infrastructure. My professional Facebook went from launching with 0 followers to almost 500 followers in two months, and I was playing to an audience of over 2,000 fans some weeks. I also learned when the best times were to promote shows and perform shows to attract the highest amount of traffic and engagement.

On the technical side, I learned how to get professional quality audio into OBS for streaming. I set up a Main Stage template concert so that the show sounded consistent night after night. I also learned the Facebook, Periscope, and YouTube requirements for incoming video so that it would look and sound its best on any platform. Finally, I was able to set up Castr to handle all of the multi streaming so that I could offload that processing and strain on my computer and local network.