CASE STUDY
Live Streaming Make Music Day UK 2019
THE BRIEF
An annual celebration of music making that takes place every June 21st, Make Music Day showcases the power of live music to bring together communities both in person and online. For the 2019 edition of Make Music Day UK, The Inside Story was commissioned to provide live streaming services for the showcase London concert.
The flagship outdoor show took place at London’s The Scoop, located beside Tower Bridge, where a capacity crowd danced to bands including THePETEBOX, Kinetika Bloco, Hotsteppas and up-and-coming reggae punk four piece Smiley and the Underclass. The event was part of London Bridge City’s summer-long Summer by the River festival.
The Inside Story was asked to livestream the London event via the Make Music Day UK Facebook channel as well as being included within a coordinated livestream effort from countries across the globe. Planning and implementation was handed fully to the our video team.
Live streaming
Project management
Creation of assets
Event scheduling
THE PROJECT
The London event was located at ‘The Scoop’ outside the London Mayoral Offices; an open-air, riverside venue without reliable Wi-Fi or hardwired LAN connections. After scouting the area to check Wi-Fi connections within reach of the Mayoral Offices, it was decided that our best option was to use our LiveU Solo, which offers a bonded internet connection via two 4G connections. Using the LiveU Solo as our backbone, we used a Roland V-1HD via HDMI as an AV switch, with the ability to run lower thirds and information screens as overlays, as well as two camera sources.
Audio was a mixture of live micing using an XY matched pair of mics and a feed straight from the mixing desk, to ensure capture of both the crowd as well as the clarity of performances.
The day was split into 2 and pre-programmed via Facebook, so that the event could be publicised through Facebook advertising. We had to be very careful of broadcasting DJ sets between performances however, as Facebook has notoriously sensitive DRM.
THE RESULTS
The four-hour stream was completed and received much acclaim, with an estimated audience of 300,000 people across all performances. Despite dealing with difficulties such as the possibility of signal dropout in a high demand bandwidth area, and the nature of live performances to shift in schedule, The Inside Story team delivered a professional and reliable stream for the London flagship event.
"It was great working with The Inside Story who held our hand through the process."
Alison Porter, Make Music Day UK lead project manager.
THE CLIENT
Make Music Day UK
Make Music Day first came to the UK in 2012 and the number of gigs taking place has been growing year on year. 2017 was the first UK-wide coordinated event with support and funding from national organisations resulting in 147 performances. In 2021, a total of 3,589 live and online performances took place across the UK, involving 31,122 performers who brought inspiring musical experiences to 330,336 people and reached 2 million via #MakeMusicDayUK.
