Where to Watch U2 Live on YouTube
Update: Screenshots and thoughts from the show.
YouTube will live-stream U2’s Los Angeles tour stop Sunday night, an event that could well be the largest single traffic peak the enormous site has handled to date.
The stream, at YouTube.com/U2, will go live with the show at 8:30 p.m. PT on Sunday. It will be visible in 16 countries — Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, UK, U.S. — a significant achievement on its own given the complexity of music rights. And of course, U2 has an immense global audience.
Both YouTube and Hulu, sites that usually focus their on-demand content, have been tempted to explore live streaming — of music events especially. Neither site has a fully developed live-streaming offering, but has rather brought on shows and other events on a case-by-case basis. YouTube most recently streamed Dave Matthews Band and other artists at San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival. We tuned in to that show an saw a remarkably good stream with adaptive bitrates enabled to maximize a smooth experience.
YouTube’s Chris Maxcy, director of partner development, said Sunday’s U2 concert would be divided into archived footage and posted with advertising on U2’s YouTube channel after the event. He did not disclose further details on the implementation.
“We suspect it will be very popular in terms of live streams” was the most Maxcy would say about YouTube’s hopes for the event and its future live-streaming plans. He said he was confident the site’s infrastructure would hold up.
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[...] closer and closer to having a live-streaming offering of its own, experimenting tonight with a live stream of a U2 concert. The stream started at 8:30 PT with crowd shots and a skit where The Edge says the concert is going [...]
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That’s nice, but on the east coast of the USA, where I live, this will start at 11:30 pm. And most of Europe will be sleeping at this time. Who is going to get up at 4:30 am on Monday morning, Paris time, to watch this feed?
Maybe they should have started the concert at an earlier time.
@Kelly – well at least you can watch it at home on your laptop in bed at that late hour.
Makes sense. But you know, Kelly, I bet for this one time event, many people will stay up to see it streaming live. Not everyone gets the chance to see U2 live. This is great!
This is a huge leap for web broadcasting. Having millions of viewers at a particular time on the web is still quite a feat but it will happen sooner than later.
what an awesome show!