Facebook to introduce service that will allow artists to charge for livestream access

With live music at a complete standstill, we’ve been scrambling to find ways to financially support artists during these uncertain times. Facebook has announced that they are working on a way to allow artists to monetise live streaming via its Facebook Live platform.

The company has revealed that in an attempt to support artists, small businesses and creators they are working on a plan to allow Pages to charge for access to events with Live videos on Facebook. The company revealed to Pitchfork that more details about this initiative are set to be revealed soon.

To assist in raising money for causes, you will now be able to add the donate video to live videos wherever nonprofit fundraisers are available.

Livestreaming is increasingly the fuzzword, and perhaps the new normal, as musicians and artist’s find ways to connect with self-isolating patrons, and tap into new revenue.

The past few months has seen a golden era of live-streaming concerts, most of them for free. Whilst we all universally yearn for live music to return to what it once was, it has been a true privilege watching musicians, artists and those behind the scenes reinvent the live music industry in front of our eyes.

In addition to these new live-streaming assets, Facebook is rolling out a suite of new tools that expand its video chat capabilities. The company have announced Messanger Rooms — it’s like Zoom without discourse, a tool for initiating virtual hangouts with up to 50 people. The company has also doubled the capacity of video calls on WhatsApp from four to eight people.

“Video presence isn’t a new area for us,” shared Mark Zuckerberg. “But it’s an area that we want to go deeper in, and it fits the overall theme, which is that we’re shifting more resources in the company to focus on private communication and private social platforms, rather than just the traditional broader ones. So this is a good mix: we’re building tools into Facebook and Instagram that are helping people find smaller groups of people to then go have more intimate connections with, and be able to have private sessions with.”

You can check out the full list of Facebook updates here.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.