Who wants to watch their Favourite Artists’ Live Concerts for free?
I’m not going to lie - I’m a bit behind on this one, because today is the day I finally heard about MSN Music’s In Concert service. However, better late than never, right? This service offers live concerts by artists such as Rihanna, Jay-Z, Maroon 5, and streaming live tonight - Madonna.
photo credit: digiyesica
The service isn’t too bad: I watched parts of Maroon 5’s concert in Le Cabaret, and it actually looked better than Youtube! Looks like In Concert is of some use after all. Youtube’s definitely got more variety when it comes to this stuff, but at least In Concert is fully-legal. There are short commercial clips playing in between, and the whole site isn’t as streamlined as it could be (in fact it’s a bit bloated-looking), but it still works nonetheless. And that’s good enough for me!
The Maroon 5 concert, on the other hand, was downright impressive. They could’ve done with a bit more audience pumping and interaction with the crowds - it wasn’t Bon Jovi impressive, but it was still quite something to watch. If you’re looking to try out In Concert (free, no signups) then visit the link below!
Visit:
http://music.msn.com/inconcert (free, no registration needed)
Why Tube with Youtube?
According to the general public, there’s only one place for viewing videos - Youtube. I suppose that this notion can be easily generated due to the fact Youtube’s got the most users and videos and is the pioneer of internet video - but let’s face it, thanks to its popularity, Youtube has gone down the tube. Youtube’s video quality alone turned me off the first time I watched one of my videos. So why do I continue to tube with Youtube?
Audience reach
It’s all about the audience. I mainly create videos to promote my blogs and to use as a means of digital media (as a digital media blog, I’ve got to stay on top of this stuff). Youtube would be ideal for the first cause thanks to its huge user base. However, if I wanted to publish a video post, I would rather do it on another network with higher quality when compared to Youtube - I choose to use Blip.tv thanks to its acceptance of users under 17 with parental consent. I do turn 17 this fall though.
Also, most of my friends have Youtube accounts, making them available to comment. I was surprised when I published a communication technology project last year on Youtube and had a huge number of responses - I didn’t even push people to comment, and yet here they were coming left and right. I won’t lie - my project was a three-week piece of work for a five-minute music video, and I hardly have that kind of time to continue producing good quality work. However, I do hope to receive some comments on my videos.
Playing Catch-up?
Well, it seems as though Youtube is finally playing catch-up with the rest of the video hosts out there. Along with beginning to offer higher-quality resolutions for certain videos only, Youtube is also starting to offer revenue programs, making it ever-so-appealing.
As soon as Youtube makes these features more widely available, I’m sure Youtube will be unstoppable. However, I still suggest using other video hosts, as I predict that they will certainly always be a few steps ahead of Youtube.
Priorities
I guess it all depends on your priority and your objective. If you’re going for reach and audience and promotion, you’re going to want to stick with Youtube. However, if you’re trying to make a video post or submit a short film, or even host a longer film, you’re going to want to choose something over the measly ten minutes that you get from Youtube.
