DGTL sets a new precedent for sustainability
Dutch brand DGTL has announced the final piece in its ‘overall sustainability puzzle’ after partnering with SkyNRG, a pioneer in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
The new partnership will ensure that all artists flying to and from DGTL’s eight international editions reduce their CO2 emissions by replacing fossil fuel with SAF, using the ‘book and claim’ model.
The festival says it now has a ‘firm handle’ on every aspect of its sustainability cycle, having solved sustainability issues around energy, water and sanitation, food and commodities at their events.
Last year, DGTL’s flagship event in Amsterdam was the first electronic music festival to become fully sustainable, setting a precedent in the international live music industry.
The brand also has editions in Barcelona, Madrid, Santiago, São Paulo, Tel Aviv and Bangalore.
“DGTL’s festivals have a huge reach, which is why it is important we lead by example and plant the seed for change”
“We feel a responsibility to continuously improve and maintain our social and environmental impact on the globe and we are committed to leave the world a bit better than we found it,” says DGTL’s sustainability coordinator Mitchell van Dooijeweerd.
“That’s why we are always researching and implementing innovative measures to progressively reduce emissions. But we’re looking beyond our own emissions too. Through this partnership with SkyNRG, we reduce CO2 emissions together with our artists and ensure that what we do inspires our surroundings.
“Replacing fossil kerosine with SAF is a huge step forward for unavoidable flights. Furthermore, it is a scalable solution that can reduce air travel emissions for other events too where air travel may be unavoidable. DGTL’s festivals have a huge reach, which is why it is important we lead by example and plant the seed for change.”
Under the new partnership, DGTL and SkyNRG – alongside climate tech builder Chooose – will also launch a carbon emissions calculator that both the industry and general public can use to evaluate and reduce their CO2 footprint.
Climate healing and carbon removals will be a key topic at the summer edition of the Green Events and Innovations Conference, taking place online on 16 September 2021. Tickets are available here.
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.
Dutch festivals reschedule en masse for September
Swathes of Dutch festivals are postponing spring editions until the autumn in order to be covered by the government’s event cancellation insurance scheme.
The government announced the €300 million insurance scheme last month and is now considering a 1 June commencement date, which is prompting an increasing number of festivals to delay events until the second half of the year.
September is shaping up to be a particularly busy month in the Netherlands’ 2021 festival calendar, with newly rescheduled dates from Awakenings, Paaspop, Zwarte Cross, DGTL, Dauwpop and Utrecht Central Park Festival among others.
Amsterdam dance festival DGTL (pictured), which typically take places during Easter weekend, has been rescheduled for 11 and 12 September at its usual location, the NDSM docklands.
DJs including The Blessed Madonna, HAAi, CamelPhat, Honey Dijon, Nina Kraviz and Ricardo Villalobos have been confirmed.
Dauwpop has also been pushed back, from its standard date in May to 4 September, but will take place at its usual location in Hellendoorn.
Awakenings, Paaspop, Zwarte Cross, DGTL, Dauwpop and Utrecht Central Park Festival have rescheduled for September
The 26th edition of the Mojo-promoted festival will host performances from artists including Chef Special, Eefje De Visser, Kensington and Typhoon. Dauwpop’s organisers say they want to book as many of the same names as possible from the cancelled 2020 event.
Elsewhere, the Utrecht Central Park Festival in Transwijk Park has been moved from 5 June to 18 September “to give visitors more certainty that [the festival] can still take place this year”.
According to the festival, 85% of the tickets have already been sold during last year, while the remaining few are on sale now.
The organisers say they’re hoping to re-book the acts that were due to perform at last year’s edition including Kensington, Chef Special, Di-rect, De Staat and more.
Earlier this month, Paaspop, Awakenings and Zwarte Cross announced new dates.
Best Kept Secret, Pinkpop, Defqon. 1, Motel Mozaique Festival and Ribs & Blues are among the other Dutch festivals scheduled to take place in the spring, but which haven’t announced rescheduled dates.
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.
A new dawn of digital: Behind livestreaming’s “massive explosion”
In the wake of the coronavirus crisis, livestreaming is being used by organisers and artists alike in ever more diverse, versatile and creative ways, as virtual events and interactions help to keep brands alive, fans engaged and revenue flowing.
The One World: Together at Home took place over the weekend, becoming one of the biggest livestreamed music events in history. The mammoth livestreamed benefit concert, co-curated by Lady Gaga and organised by the World Health Organisation and Global Citizen, raised almost $128 million for vaccine development and local and regional charities.
The event has been compared by some to an online Live Aid – although organisers state One World is not a traditional fundraiser, with the majority of money raised by corporate partners and philanthropists, rather than by individuals.
The event featured the likes of Taylor Swift, Stevie Wonder, Celine Dion, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Chris Martin, Rita Ora, Usher, Elton John and Paul McCartney, in celebration of frontline health workers and in support of the WHO’s Covid-19 solidarity fund.
The concert was split into two parts, with a six-hour “pre-show” streamed on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube; followed by the main two-hour broadcast, which was shown simultaneously by all three of the main US TV networks. The event also appeared on the UK’s BBC on Sunday evening (19 April), as well as on streaming services including Alibaba, Amazon Prime Video, Apple, LiveXLive, Tencent, Tidal, Twitch and YouTube, as well as airing inside virtual multiplayer game Roblox.
Elsewhere, livestreaming has been used to raise funds for those within the live events industry, such as those put on by Beatport, Bandsintown, TicketCo, or as a goodwill gesture to fans missing out on a shutdown festival, as in the case of DGTL Amsterdam, Lollapalooza Chile and Estéreo Picnic in Colombia, among others.
“I think people aren’t so bullish at the moment, and are trying to help each other out”
The breadth of opportunities in livestreaming is huge, with some monetising via an informal virtual busking, or tip jar model, through charitable donations, or via a ticketed, pay-per-view or subscription model.
For Cirque du Soleil, livestreaming is simply acting as a way to give viewers an escape from life under quarantine. The company’s new CirqueConnect content hub premieres a 60-minute special featuring highlights from live shows each week, before adding the content to an archive together with virtual reality experiences, tutorials and music videos.
“Digital is not the same as live, but it is the best we can do now,” Sheila Morin, Cirque du Soleil’s chief marketing and experience officer tells IQ. “The goal is to make it easy for fans to find entertaining content. We are not making money from this.”
The first 60-minute special attracted 8 million viewers on Friday 27 March, with the content hub overall attracting 32m users so far. “We have a lot of ideas about what we could do with this in the future,” adds Morin.
Another live music company delving into the online space is management firm 11E1even Group, which has set up the ongoing virtual festival Live From Out There. The idea for the festival, the group’s owner Ben Baruch tells IQ, originated when clients starting to have tours cancelled.
“We immediately entered into the mode of how to keep money flowing to artists and crew with new streams of revenue ,” says Baruch, “and thought of livestreaming but with the mentality of booking and marketing it like a traditional festival.”
“We are doing this to make sure that artists and crew are paid for their performances to help them survive during these crazy times”
The team approached the festival in the same way as they would for booking a live show, says Baruch, putting together a virtual festival line-up and bringing in Sweet Relief Musicians Fund, which provides financial assistance to industry workers and artists, as a charitable partner.
Artists upload 45 to 60 minutes of unique never before seen live footage which the Live From Out There team prices accordingly. The virtual event has raised over $250,000 so far, with fans paying for $50 six-week subscriptions, $20 weekend passes or paying per view, with single shows starting from $5. Of the revenue generated, 70% goes directly to the artists.
“We are doing this to make sure that artists and crew are paid for their performances to help them survive during these crazy times. I very much support many of the other models where all money goes to charity and artists involved don’t get paid, but for us, we are doing that through Sweet Relief, plus making sure the artists involved in our programming get paid.”
For the first week of programming, says Baruch, no major recording artists performed at the festival, meaning licensing has not been an issue. “I also think people aren’t so bullish at the moment, and are trying to help each other out,” says Baruch, adding that, “we will continue to go grow and diversify our platform and did so last week for the Bill Withers Tribute which had artists such as Finneas, Stephen Marley, Craig Robinson, Allen Stone and many more major artists.”
“We have no intention of stopping at this point and are already working on phase two of the platform and see everything that we are working on now still being relevant once we return to some sort of normal,” adds Baruch.
A mainstay in the livestreaming game, self-serve platform Stageit has been hosting concerts online since 2011, but has seen a “gigantic uptake” since the coronavirus outbreak.
“As people start to miss live shows more and more, we will see an increasing number turning online for their live music fix”
“There has been a massive explosion on the site,” says Stageit’s production and artist relations manager Nick Cox. “We are now having more big shows in a day than we have had in a month typically.”
Stageit is licensed by US performance rights organisations (PROs) Ascap and BMI and, as no content is archived on the site, there is no need to pay for any recorded rights, says Cox. Artists that have performed on the site include Jon Bon Jovi, Korn, Jason Mraz, Sara Bareilles, Rick Springfield and Bret Michaels, with a new influx of artists that have had upcoming tour dates cancelled now coming to the site.
Cox believes that the self-serving, “democratised” nature of the platform, and the absence of a middle man needed to access it, is liberating for many artists. If people want to play to ten fans and make money from that, we don’t want to take that experience away from them, he says.
In terms of the future of livestreaming, Cox states that “more people are going to be willing to pay for [livestreamed content] now”.
“It will never be a replacement for a live ticketed event – they are two completely different things and we are not trying to compete with this, but as people start to miss live shows more and more, we will see an increasing number turning online for their live music fix.”
Read more about the business of livestreaming here.
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.
Amsterdam’s DGTL goes digital
The organisers of DGTL festival, which was scheduled to take place from 11 to 12 April at Amsterdam’s NDSM Docklands, have announced they are hosting an online event in its place, Digital DGTL.
DGTL Amsterdam was among a number of Dutch festivals to be cancelled at the end of last month, following an extension of a governmental ban on all public gatherings until 1 June.
Now, DGTL is joining a growing number of festivals – including South American events Lollapalooza Chile and Colombia’s Estéreo Picnic – to provide fans with online content on the original dates of the cancelled event.
Over two days from 2 to 11p.m. (CET), fans will be able to access live streams from 28 different artists across three “stages” via the Digital DGTL website.
Over two days, fans will be able to access live streams from 28 different artists across three “stages”
Those “attending” Digital DGTL can also sign up to alerts to notify them of when their favourite artists are about to perform. Acts playing the virtual event include Jasper Wolff, Luuk Van Dijk, Deniro, Adriatique and Nicolas Lutz.
DGTL has partnered with Absolut vodka and Kornuit beer, as well as local catering establishments, allowing “festivalgoers” to pre-order food – all vegetarian – and drink for delivery during the festival from a digital bar and food court. Festival merchandise is also available to buy via the website.
Using the hashtag #KeepDistanceStayDGTL, organisers remind fans to keep to their own homes while tuning in to the festival.
Organisers also call on viewers to make a donation to Erasmus MC (Erasmus University medical Centre) during the online festivals, for their work in developing a vaccine and other medicines to fight coronavirus.
Photo: Hanna Norlin/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) (cropped)
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.