SoldOutt LIVE

Inspiration

All across the world, people are staying in. Cancellations and postponements are everywhere, and revenue is not.

Artists are running out of money and Organizers have no choice but to refund tickets and don't plan another event for a while. There is chaos in the event industry.

In the past few months, major events like Tomorrowland, SmukFest, Glastonbury, and Eurovision have all been canceled. When such established and globally renowned festivals couldn’t handle the uncertainty, is there really hope for smaller, lesser-known players?

In our experience, there is more than just hope. There is a solution.

We’ve been talking to people in the industry, sharing their pain, and working on solutions with them. We are helping them pivot their offline events, not just with our existing sales-focused ticketing solution, but with our experience in consulting and building disruptive solutions.

It is certain now that people are looking for alternatives to offline events because they aren’t able to go out. And post-COVID, it is less likely that people will return to crowded gatherings soon. It’s up to event organizers to provide those alternatives!

Hence, we came up with the idea of replicating the experience one would have at concerts, theatres or music and cultural festival, online. We see the need for Artists and Organizers to host online gigs or music festivals to engage with their fans while using other methods to monetize and earn revenue to stay alive in this new world order.

Hence SoldOutt LIVE was born.

The Problem Our Project Solves

As of 2018, the European music industry generated 6.02 billion € in revenue and created more than 12 million full-time jobs. COVID-19, has, however, brought the world to a standstill and this has been a significant blow to the music industry. As a result of the pandemic…

Social distancing is enforced - while it is good to stay home, this has impaired the daily lives of artists and musicians.

Events are being cancelled – venues are closing their doors, while concerts and festivals are being cancelled, leading to a loss of millions of euros.

There is a major loss of income opportunities - a survey by the Music Industry Research Association and the Princeton University Survey Research Centre in 2018 concluded that live performances were the most common income source for musicians. This is no longer possible at this time.

Who is getting affected?

Independent Artists – musicians that depend on clubs and local events for their livelihood. Alex Ähm, an independent musician in Berlin lamented that “all planned concerts with my band have been cancelled, we can’t rehearse or make plans for the future”.

Label Artists – these musicians depend on tours and festivals and are also facing an income loss.

Concert & festival organizers - we have seen festivals such as Tomorrowland and Glastonbury being canceled. These players depend on ticket sales and sponsorships from concerts and festivals for their survival.

We have seen that lately, artists are Facebook live-streaming their performance. This shows that they are seeking alternative ways to engage with their fans and generate revenue to survive.

Nonetheless, there exists no channel that is focused on generating serious revenue for them...

The Solution We Bring To The Table

SoldOutt LIVE is a virtual gig and festival platform, that revolutionizes virtual performance, fusing the art and culture vibe. The platform offer solutions to both artists and organizers.

Through ‘Virtual Gigs’, artists will have a platform to:

Host live performances online.
Set a target and collect donations from fans.
Earn tips while performing.
Charge fee for song requests, private performances, meet-and-greet through 1 on 1 call and jam session with the audience.
Sell CDs & merchandise.

Through the ‘Virtual Festival’, organizers will have a platform to:

Host virtual festival online through interactive 3D maps that mimic a full music festival.
Live performances and DJs sessions can be held simultaneously in this virtual festival.
Virtual art exhibitions, theatre shows, along with cooking, health and creative workshops are also present - providing a full musical and cultural experience!
Organizers can generate revenue through selling tickets & sponsorships, selling CDs & merchandise, and sell food that is ordered from audiences from cooking workshops at the virtual festival.

What We Have Done During The Weekend

“Music has a healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours”, was once said by Elton John. We are Soldoutt, a ticketing platform start-up company that handles festivals, tech, courses, workshops, and tech conferences proving to already have a successful concept, we wanted to extend ourr platform on this idea and find a solution to help artists continue to create music and arts, and organizers to survive this crisis. During the weekend, an initial brainstorming session was conducted to analyze the current situation for artists and organizers and how a virtual performance platform may be beneficial to them. We also conducted market research through surveys and phone interviews and gathered data on issues they are facing, ways they are currently coping with those issues and their acceptance and openness to a virtual performance platform. After realizing the potential this project could have and also while receiving various collaboration requests, a prototype was created.

The solution’s impact on the crisis

In a broad sense, SoldOutt LIVE is providing a solution to the music industry as a whole. It is allowing various players in the music industry from artists, to musicians, tour organizers, festival organizers and promoters etc. to once again interact and create revenue. It shifts music and arts experience from offline to online.

Positive Impact on artists:

Artists and musician can go live and earn revenue anytime.
They can engage with fans directly and accumulated a fan base can be used for marketing future events and products.

Positive Impact on organizers:

Lower cost & risks - burden on organizers is reduced as the cost for setting up an online festival is much lower.
Faster to launch - Preparation for an online festival doesn’t require as much time as a venue-based event.

The necessities in order to continue the project

We're really passionate about building this for the community and want to provide this for free until artists and organizers start to get a stable income that we can start charging a fee and earn revenue to save our startup as well. However, we believe this will revolutionize the event industry in a big way, so to further develop our platform and help more people, we will need

support from event organizers to share their concerns and ideas and build this together
support from local authorities and agencies to communicate with artists and organizers to connect with us
funding support for scaling the platform and people so we can reach and support artists and organizers globally

The value of our solution after the crisis

The crisis is not only pushing the creative abilities of artists but has also brought about a change in consumer behavior from audiences. Music streaming is experiencing a decline – with Spotify reporting a drop of 11% in the week commencing March 13, while video streaming is receiving a big boost. SoldOutt LIVE has the potential to change live performances as we know it. With no physical limitations, a virtual performance platform can reach a vastly wider online audience. With arts and music being the food for the soul, people should not be deprived of experiences that will nourish their spirits. They will no longer miss out on them, as anyone anywhere can view their favorite artists, creative workshops etc. from wherever they are. This will also lead to a positive impact in reducing carbon footprints as fans are no longer required to travel to venues for events. A virtual performance platform will also bring about a wave of new artists. With a lower cost to entry and almost no limitation to start, anyone can become artists in their own right.

What is SoldOutt

SoldOutt is a sales-focused, white-labeled ticketing platform that hacks ticket sales for tech conferences in Asia & Europe. We're a bunch of crazy and passionate people that builds product really fast as long as it generates revenue for event organizers or artists. We launched our online event platform in 2 days are now on track to launch a Gig and Virtual Festival model in less than 2 weeks.

Find out more about SoldOutt at www.soldoutt.com.