Missed or delayed innovation? The developments of live streaming of musical events in Italy

The paper aims to present part of the results of a three-year research, concerning the evolution of the offer of live-streaming of musical events in Italy. The research embraced both the production side, through interviews with managers of local platforms (or local divisions of international platforms) specialized in music live-streaming and with professionals of the live music industry (i.e. tour agencies, local promoters, venues), and the fruition side, through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with participants in live-streamed music events. During the lockdown caused by the pandemic emergency, the search for alternative solutions to the impossibility of performing live concerts seemed to have given a decisive boost to the offer of live-streaming of musical events, beyond sporadic ones or their use as a form of self-promotion by emerging artists, through platforms such as Twitch and YouTube. At that time, new platforms were born in Italy aimed at developing an innovative offer that could continue even after the pandemic by virtue of the diversity of the proposed experience, compared to that of the traditional live show, thanks to the use of technologies that enable particular ways of attendance and participation. The offer should not have consisted in the simple live-streaming of concerts but in performances created in the studio exclusively for live-streaming or designed to exploit possibilities for interaction with the musicians and personalization of fruition. These proposals have been accompanied by great emphasis on the potential advantages of live music streaming, in terms of audience development, widening of business and monetization opportunities for artists' creativity, possibility of experimenting with new types of performance and of public participation. Nonetheless, once the pandemic emergency ended, these services confronted numerous problems that arrested or slowed down their development: problematic relationships with other players in the live music sector, complexity in managing and negotiating rights, poor efficiency of business models, consumption habits. Only in the last month have some of these services been back in operation, focusing less on technological innovation and more on rethinking the formats deemed most suitable for live music streaming, changing negotiation strategies with other players and taking advantage of the opportunities arising from the entry into the field, also with local initiatives, from the part of large multinational corporations, such as Amazon. The paper intends to reconstruct the debate and processes that have informed the development of live-streaming music in Italy, highlighting elements of innovation and critical issues with which they are confronted. It will primarily draw on interviews with live-streaming services managers and live industry professionals, while also integrating some information deriving from the analysis of participants experiences, useful for providing insights on how users' perceptions and behaviors may influence strategies and criticalities on the production side.