5 Tips On Livestreaming Your Concert From Home with Nick Norton
Nick Norton. Photo credit: Brandon J. Rolle.
Nick Norton joins Classical Post for 5 Tips to help get you started with Livestreaming your concert from home!
Composer Norton originally founded Equal Sound as a Los Angeles based concert series. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Equal Sound created the Corona Relief Fund to provide direct financial assistance to musicians who have lost work as a result of coronavirus-related event cancellations. Norton swiftly positioned the organization as a 501(c)(3) to receive donations that will go straight to musicians in need. Artists need only apply for the funding by showing proof of a canceled performance, and funding will be disbursed on a first-come, first-serve basis. Equal Sound’s Corona Relief Fund has received national recognition from The New Yorker, Billboard and NPR Music.
Before turning fully to music, Norton made his living coding websites. In this current moment, many musicians are asking how to earn a living when being a musician has traditionally depended on performing in the same room as others and are turning to Livestreaming. In this spirit, Norton shares these 5 empowering tips to get artists streaming!
1. Ensure Your Financial Security Online
The single best way to do this is to use the app 1password. Below is a video on how it works. It may take a while to set up, but once it is set it is crazy easy to stay safe. Importantly, it will force you to change your passwords if they discover that you've been involved in a hack, anywhere in the world. On that same note, only use one credit card on the internet. Or better yet, use Apple Pay or Google Pay exclusively as they are secure and easy to use.
2. Research
Spend some time as a user on the platform of your choice. Mine is Twitch because it's easy to set up and pays well, and they gamify it so that you feel like you're playing an RPG and earning badges and level ups for doing stuff that actually pays you. YouTube and Instagram are solid, and Facebook seems to be shaping up into something usable, even if it doesn't pay nearly as well as Twitch.
It doesn't matter which platform you decide on. I would recommend that you try them all for a few hours each as a user and see which you find the easiest to navigate, and enjoy using. You'll also start getting ideas for what your channel might look like.
3. Choose a Camera
To start, you don’t need anything fancy. In fact, I wouldn’t even get a separate microphone yet, at least not until you’re sure you want to do this. At which point you should probably just get one of those Blue Yeti bundles so you don’t have to buy an interface until you really need one.
I have a couple of cheap cameras I like that some of my friends in film production recommended I check out. Here are links, priced lowest to highest.
Vivitar Full HD Action Camera, DVR786HD-BLK
Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, Widescreen Video Calling and Recording, 1080p Camera
This is the one I actually use as my webcam.
I plan to order this, and like it because it doesn’t have a mic, so I don’t have an extra audio source to worry about when the mics I have are working fine.
Just a quick note on camera placement: it’s great if you can swing two cameras, and, if you can, use the free software called Streamlabs OBS to run multiple camera or audio feeds, set up picture in picture, screen capture, and stuff like that. The Streamlabs setup guide is pretty easy to follow to get you rolling quickly.
When you place your cameras, one should be right in front of you, just like a normal webcam. The other should be pointed at whatever you’re featuring—perhaps your hands, if you’re a guitarist, or your decks if you’re a DJ.
For lighting, the only real rule is avoid overdoing it on light coming from behind you. It’s a maxim among cinematographers that everyone is beautiful backlit, and they’re not wrong, but on cheaper cameras strong backlighting will throw off the white balance and turn you into a black hole in the middle of the screen. We really don’t want to mess with the theory of relativity when we’re just trying to set up a webcam, so here’s a helpful article on “three point lighting,” a technique you can miniaturize in your space and achieve with practical lights (read: some lamps you have in your closet).
4. Go live
The first time that you go live, view it as a test, it doesn’t have to go perfectly. It's live, and no one is going to be watching the first time you do it. To get good, you have to practice, and there’s no time like the present.
Everyone is currently in the same boat and audiences are understanding if the first time you go live it doesn’t go smoothly. Your audience will be there with you as you improve, and this actually helps build a stronger connection with your viewers. One time I dropped my camera live and everyone saw my dog, and then asked me to bring the camera over to the dog. It was way easier than playing music and I got paid the same amount. You probably can’t do this because your dog probably isn’t as cute as mine:
Norton's Dog: Dude
Anyway, what I’m saying is to just go with the flow and see what happens. It’s counterintuitive, but looking not-quite-put-together can be really helpful on the vulnerability front, which is really the only thing that matters when it comes to artists connecting with viewers.
5. Get Paid
For a really easy to follow setup guide, the best book I've found yet is Twitch for Musicians, by Karen Allen. In all seriousness, read that and do what she says to do and you can start making cash by the end of your first week. Here's a link.
The long and short of it is that if you get 50 followers on Twitch it’s really easy to get paid. Twitch guides you in how to do this. Just ask you friends and family to follow you to get started, then they can quit once you actually have followers.
