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LIVE 8
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LIVE 8 in
45 minutes!! My mobile beeped with this
message from a friend and music aficionado
in Mumbai. This mega concert was being held
on the 2nd of July across 8 locations -
London, Philadelphia, Toronto, Rome, Paris,
Berlin, Tokyo and Johannesburg - for relief
for Africa. But unfortunately for me, my
cable TV operator in Chennai had omitted
to include both MTV International and VH1
in my paid subscription - the two channels
that were supposedly broadcasting the concert
live!
In many ways this concert was a land mark
event. For a die hard Pink Floyd fan like
me, the group's
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re-union for this concert after split up post their
album "The Wall" was an event in itself.
The role that technology played in making this event
interactive is a pointer of the shape of things
to come. It is estimated that around 1 billion people
tuned in to the program one way or the other. Akamai,
an online content distribution company claimed in
its press release that the official website for
LIVE 8 (www.live8live.com) received more than 300
million hits in 24 hours, reaching 13,000 hits per
second at peak!
The release further said that the broadcast reached
up to 85% of the global population in 180 countries!
One content provider that streamed all the concerts
live on its website was AOL. This provider, that
had till now garden-walled its contents only for
its subscribers opened its portals for non subscribers
too, in an attempt to transition from an Internet
Service Provider to online portal and content
destination! And what better way to announce this
than by letting netizens stream the concert at
music portal. While MTV, I am told, added a lot
of chatter and chaos in changing and chopping
between various simultaneous concerts, AOL offered
all feeds live and left it for the subscribers
to choose the one they wanted to see and hear!
Incidentally, the
recordings are available on the AOL site till
end of August (www.music.aol.com), for those interested
in catching the reunion of Pink Floyd or listening
to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"
rendered by Sir Paul McCartney and U2 - the most
downloaded song of the concert!
Besides the online
streaming, unlike the Live Aid of 1985, Live 8
asked people to contribute their voice and opinion.
Fans at concert and elsewhere could send their
messages which would be added to the petition
urging the world to end poverty. It is estimated
that more than 26 million messages came through,
either on mobile or e-mail! It would be an easy
assumption that viewers would have preferred to
watch this event on their television sets. But
the advantages of on-line streaming has once again
brought alive the battle of eye balls. While one
can celebrate the contribution of technology for
this event, one only hopes that its related campaign
to "make poverty history" becomes a
reality and more importantly, the aid actually
reaches the needy millions in Africa, without
the corrupt regimes getting in the way!
| It would be an easy assumption that viewers
would have preferred to watch this event on
their television sets. But the advantages
of on-line streaming has once again brought
alive the battle of eye balls. What do you
think? Please email your responses to esbmarketing@sifycorp.com |
Rahul Swarup
President
Sify Enterprise Solution
We
welcome your comments and suggestions.
Please e-mail us at esbmarketing@sifycorp.com
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