A New Digital World Order – Live Streaming, TikTok The Weeknd, Sal Xo & Beirut
With the new world order taking shape quite rapidly in front of our eyes, with mask production generating ridiculous amounts of revenues to corporations, and video conferencing tools like Zoom changing the normative “hello” to “can you hear me?”, artists are struggling to find ways to keep their fans engaged.
On August 7, 2020, the Weeknd raised $350,000 for Equal Justice Initiative by selling new and limited Weekend x TikTok merchandise through a live concert.
2 million people tuned into the show live on TikTok, an app facing serious sanctions from the United States Executive house. Regardless, the platform facilitated the possibility of the live show and played its part in delivering a show for a good cause.
The New Digital Order for Artists
The Weeknd hosting the live concerts wasn’t the first to utilize a digital platform to entertain a host of people isolated in their living rooms, 2 million to be exact. In April, Travis Scott hosted a psychedelic live concert on Fortnite that drew 12.3 million recurring players to tune in live to watch a magical show.
The $350,000 raised by ‘The Weeknd Experience’ concert was through the sale of a new Weeknd x TikTok merchandise, which was available for a limited time. The singer’s manager, Wassim “Sal” Slaiby, and his wife, Rima Fakih, led the charge to get relief for the people in Beirut affected by last week’s devastating blast. Slaiby aka Sal, wrote on his Instagram:
‘I am so honored and humbled to work with artist’s who have such deep care for the world and right now for our brothers & sisters of Lebanon who are in pain and need our collective help. I want to thank my brother @theweeknd for his generous and class act of donating $300,000 to the Global Aid for Lebanon campaign. Also, I want to give a special thank you to Michael Rapino @michaelrapino and my Live Nation family for $50,000 donation. Give what you can and let’s repost so the world can come together to help Lebanon from this this devastating tragedy.’
On Monday, The Weeknd announce the release of a something new – see below.
The approach to maximizing the digital space to host concerts and live shows is slowly becoming the norm for artists to maintain engagement with the fans, and help support causes, just like Lebanese comedian Nemr who hosted a fundraiser for the Lebanese Red Cross. And with the assistance of other comedians like Maz Jobrani, Jim Gaffigan, and Omid Djalili creating an impressive lineup of comedians entertaining people and helping raise funds for the victims of the recent Beirut Blast.
The move to the digital space for finding creative ways to entertain people has taken a steep learning curve for artists, but we’ve set up a guide to ride this wave. Check Coronavirus & The Music Industry where we talked about live streaming, monetizing, getting playlisted, working with influencers and much more.
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