Twitter and Live Nation team for live concert streams
Remember Twitter #Music? It’s a headscratcher for anyone who didn’t play with the short-lived app, which Twitter killed off three years ago. Now, the social media giant is poised for another crack at music through a partnership with the world’s leading concert promoter, Live Nation.
Twitter used the platform of the NewFronts conference earlier this week to unveil content partnerships with LN and 13 others to drive its evolution from a micro-blogging spot into a destination for live television.
Through the new arrangement, LN will select concert and original content for streaming on Twitter, kicking off with Zac Brown Band’s May 13 show at Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre in Atlanta. The likes of Train, Portugal The Man, August Alsina and Marian Hill will also enjoy the Twitter live-stream treatment, though no Australian acts have yet been announced to its lineup.
“Our partnership with Twitter allows us to amplify the live music experience creating a tool for artists to reach millions of fans around the world,” comments Jordan Zachary, chief strategy officer for Live Nation (via TechCrunch). “Through Twitter’s product suite, fans will be able to be immersed in the live experience and interact with each other in real time as they watch some of the year’s most exciting concert events.”
The San Francisco tech company has also forged live, premium content pacts with the NFL, WNBA, Viacom, BuzzFeed News and others as it reinvents itself a go-to, content-rich video hub.
Its latest dig into music is something of a no-brainer for Twitter, which streamed more than 800 hours of live video in the first quarter and boasts 328 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2017. Six of its 10 most followed users are musicians, led by Katy Perry with 97.5 million followers, and Billboard’s Grammy Awards live pre-show was reportedly the most-viewed entertainment live stream ever delivered from the platform.
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.