Spacebar Streams Concerts To Your Phone So Musicians Don’t Starve
“I wish I could have gone to that concert” is a common refrain amongst music fans. Spacebar can’t teleport you to the venue, but it can stream the audio to your mobile device so you can listen along for a dollar or two. Launching today at TechCrunch Disrupt NY with 15 local clubs and musicians like Kanye West on board, Spacebar’s app could give bands a new revenue stream they desperately need.
Spacebar was started by Gregory Miller, one of the co-founders of Google.org, the arm of the search giant tasked with fixing big global problems. Along the way, Miller realized that a whole class of artists were getting squeezed by advances in technology. With music so easy to pirate or access for free, performers are having trouble selling it. That means little bands have trouble paying rent while more popular musicians have to turn to merchandise or licensing their songs for ads to really make it big.
You might wonder why there’s no video in Spacebar. Well, that would require videographers, cameras, and editors that might cost more money than they’d earn. Plus, Miller tells me “we’re using some of the wide pipes on the Internet [that are designed to support video] to up the audio quality. We’re streaming at 256kbs and 328kbs.” Since there’s no recordings or additional distribution, and artists opt in, Spacebar doesn’t need any expensive music licenses.
So what do you do with your eyes while your ears are busy? Spacebar gives you options to follow or Like artists on Twitter and Facebook. Personally I’d love to see artist bios and album art in there too. And if you’re out and about in a dense market like New York City, you could use Spacebar’s nearby concert browsing feature to discover great shows in progress and then go see them live.
Luckily, since every artist has some built in fan base, even if that’s just couple dozen friends and family, they’ll do the marketing for Spacebar. And in the future, Spacebar could expand beyond music to pull in more art lovers. Miller tells me he imagines Spacebar hosting, “standup comedy, poets, musicals. I would love to have Stephen King read a ghost story.”
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