What is a hybrid concert, you ask? It’s a simple combination of a live performance with a small in-person audience that is streamed live to music lovers who picked an online ticket to watch the event remotely. It’s working from home, only for your audience, while your biggest fans (or the most adventurous ones) still get the chance to be there in person and experience your music at the venue.
At first, the idea of an offline + online show seemed dull and everyone preferred to either chill in their Instagram lives or wait quietly for the pandemic to pass. But the longer the situation dragged on, the more apparent it got that a solution needs to be found for musicians and event organizers to actually organize something and get paid for it.
Ticketed online concerts became the next big thing with multiple platforms popping up to cover the niche. Twitch, Stageit, Show4me, even Facebook offer the ticketing functionality for livestream events.
And while that is a great format that deserves all the attention it gets from musicians, creators, and their audiences, a hybrid concert has been getting more and more popular.
On Show4me, we had several artists and organizers who offered tickets to both live audience and online audience. People who wanted to join the shows in person where subject to certain restrictions and measures to ensure the safety of the events, while online viewers could enjoy the events from the comfort of their own homes, without masks, sanitisers, social distance, or having to travel anywhere.
What’s interesting here is the option to choose the sacrifices an attendees is willing to make: an excitement of getting out of the house and experiencing a live music show with other people and seeing the artist in person was combined with the need to take precautions like masks, distance, and sanitizers; the completely safe option of staying at home was offset by the