concert

On Wednesday (here) we reported that Pandora would live-stream an event for the first time, the Budweiser Made in America festival from Philadelphia.

We've also reported (here) that Emmis WQHT/New York "Hot 97" streamed live video from its Summer Jam festival earlier this summer. This weekend, the station will stream the entire 36-hour Rock the Bells hip-hop fest (Saturday and Sunday in Holmdel, NJ) on Hot97.TV and on Hot 97-owned Loud Digital Network. Emmis VP of digital Angie May Cook told Inside Radio, "(Live concert streams) extend your audience outside of the venue,” she says. “And you can measure a lot of the engagement, which is great for advertisers." She'll speak at RAIN Summit Dallas next month on our "Online Strategies for Local Broadcasters" panel (see today's RAIN here).

Finally, stream aggregator TuneIn has created Bumbershoot Radio (a music stream featuring artists playing this year's annual Seattle Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival), and is partnering with local non-comm KEXP to stream som of this weekend's fest performances. TuneIn was a partner of Hot 97 for its Summer Jam, and streamed performances from San Francisco's Outside Lands festival. 

"With PPM causing a greater fixation on minute-by-minute programming, broadcasting a live concert on the air can be a risky proposition," Inside Radio points out. "Dedicated web streams increasingly help fill the void for live music programming."

Pandora will for the first time live stream an event: Budweiser's inaugural "Made in America" music festival. The event -- set to take place this weekend (9/1-9/2) -- will include Jay-Z, Passion Pit, Skrillex, Miike Snow and others.

Pandora will live stream the event both online and through its mobile apps. YouTube will also live stream the festival.

"It was important that we reach fans wherever they might be," Budweiser VP Rob McCarthy told Mashable. "Our goal is to reach as broad of an audience as possible." Mashable has more coverage here.

Pandora will launch a series of free concerts, starting in December 13, with ATO recording artists Dawes in Portland, OR. The web radio service will reportedly send out invitations based on listeners' music preferences (like what music they have thumbed-up).

Even the location of the concerts was decided by listener data: "Pandora data shows that Portland-area listeners are 25% more likely to enjoy a Dawes song and 30% more likely to create a Dawes station on Pandora than listeners in any other U.S. city," reports Billboard.

This kind of promotional power for local live concerts was discussed by Pandora's founder Tim Westergren at RAIN Summit Chicago back in September. You can watch his keynote presentation here.

Billboard has more on this story here.

Clear Channel Radio's multi-artist concert event that heralded the relaunch of its iHeartRadio service will air on VH1 Wednesday evening, November 23, and twice again on Thanksgiving.

The press quickly heralded the new iHeartRadio platform as a worthy competitor to Pandora (here). The company announced Bob Pittman's October promotion (here) to CEO of CC Media Holdings as an "endorsement" of his digital initiatives, especially iHeartRadio.

Triton Digital Webcast Metrics for September indeed showed iHeartRadio's AAS (Average Active Sessions, which is essentially equivalent to AQH — i.e., average simultaneous listeners) for U.S. listening was up 10% over the previous month (Mon-Sun 6a-12M). However, we noted at the time that this growth was actually less than 1% higher than the Clear Channel's previous AAS peak in December 2010. Plus, the month-to-month increase is actually lower than the 14% growth Clear Channel achieved from July to August 2011 (more here).

The iHeartRadio Music Festival featured performances by pop, rock, hip hop, and country acts like Lady Gaga (pictured), Coldplay, Kenny Chesney, The Black Eyed Peas, Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez, Carrie Underwood, Jane’s Addiction, and Nicki Minaj. It is scheduled to air on the Palladia Network as well in December.

Over the weekend, Clear Channel hosted their iHeartRadio Festival in Las Vegas to promote their new custom radio service. The festival took place Friday and Saturday and included performances from Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Black Eyed Peas, Bruno Mars, Usher, Jennifer Lopez and more. Radio-Info has more coverage of the concert here.

The new Pandora-like iHeartRadio arrived for Android devices over the weekend as well. It launched in beta early September (RAIN coverage and review here) and an iPhone app arrived soon after (here).