Apr
28th
Mon
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What makes DeepRockdrive online concerts "interactive?"

Tonight, fans from around the world enjoyed a down-home live concert featuring the Honky Tonk Tailgate Party Tour. This quartet of country talents put on an amazing show for fans everywhere. And when I say everywhere, that includes good-ol’ folk from as far away as Slovakia! Yes, two country western fans from Slovakia enjoyed the global stage that DeepRockDrive hosts for artists to interact with their fans anywhere and everywhere.

While the guitars and fiddles were streaming music around the globe, the interactivity from fans was coming into the studio via the Internet. At one point a fan from Roswell, Georgia shouted out at the band that it, “Feels like I am sitting right in the front row.” For the team here at DeepRockDrive, that’s music to our ears because our tagline is “A million front row seats.” That’s our aspiration as we build out our service and bring in more of your favorite artists for interactive shows.

DeepRockDrive interactive concert elements

We use that term “interactive” a lot when we talk about the feeling of being in a front row seat. I thought I’d take a few minutes to show exactly what it means for both fans and artists during DeepRockDrive live online concerts.

Let’s start by forgetting about webcasts and poor-quality audio and video. They’re passive and boring and look awful. It’s 2008, and it’s high time that we use the Internet to really engage during concerts. We’ve built tools that let you and the artists engage during concerts.

First, we give you the choice of how you experience the show. During every concert, we stream both high-bandwidth and low-bandwidth version of the show so that you get the maximum possible quality over your Internet connection. We go beyond that by giving you more than one angle from which to watch the show…

DeepRockDrive interactive concert elementsYou can watch a professionally directed live mix like you’d see on TV, or you can switch to get close-ups of the artists. We change these angles for every show to get the best effects for the type of artist performing (we welcome all genres at DeepRockDrive). Click to switch as often as you like. You’re in control.

DeepRockDrive interactive concert elementsWe’ve all dreamed of collaborating with the artists the we enjoy. One way that DeepRockDrive helps fans and artists work together is through set-list voting. Every artist that performs at DeepRockDrive brings in a list of songs that they’re comfortable playing. But the magic happens because they agree to let the audience vote on which song is played next!

As the show happens, fans vote and the DeepRockDrive service keeps a live count of the vote leaders on giant screens in the studio. As a song ends, the artist looks to the readerboards to see what the audience wants to hear next. It’s especially cool when a dialog opens up and the artist pushes the fans toward a type of song. Sometimes the fans agree, but sometimes they push the show in their own direction. Every show is fun because it’s unpredictable.

Anyone who has been to a live music performance has something to say to the artist. Sometimes you scream it at the stage, other times you whisper it to a friend. At DeepRockDrive, when you have an opinion about the show, you “shout it out…”

DeepRockDrive interactive concert elements
Shouting out your thoughts not only echoes out to the community, as shown above. Your shouts are also blasted onto over 40 bigscreen monitors that wrap the stage. The artists see what you shout just milliseconds after you send it to them. And they react!

DeepRockDrive live interactive concert

Our emotions tend to take control of us, and at DeepRockDrive we encourage emotional outbursts. In fact, we’ve created a technology called “EmotApplause” that lets fans click an icon reflective of the emotion they’re feeling and beam it into the studio during the show:

DeepRockDrive interactive concert elements

Whether you want to clap, smooch the screen with a kiss, ROCK ON!, or throw your bra at the lead singer… EmotApplause gives you the tools to do it. Every show has different emotions appropriate for the music, and when you click an icon, DeepRockDrive totals your incoming emotions with the rest of the world’s and displays enormous animations on the in-studio screens. So if you and your friends work together to blast a lot of ROCK ON!s to the studio at the same time, the waiving horns will be the biggest of all emotion animations blazing in the studio for the artist.

All of these tools work together simply and seamlessly to make a concert at DeepRockDrive like none you have ever been to before. When you really engage with the artist and the other fans from around the world, you don’t just watch… you participate.

Interactivity is what makes DeepRockDrive’s online concerts truly unique, and why everyone gets to experience the show from a virtual front row seat. We hope to see you at a DeepRockDrive show soon. No matter what your taste in music, you’re bound to find a show you’ll enjoy on our upcoming concert calendar.

Apr
22nd
Tue
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Wow - things are different around here!

Last Friday, we released a major update to DeepRockDrive. There is a brand new look and feel for the site, and we introduced a new DeepRockDrive Facebook application.

Our core passion is on connecting artists and fans through interactive live concerts. Feedback from fans and artists participating together in DeepRockDrive interactive live shows has been overwhelmingly positive, and we continue to create new tools to bring even more interactivity to these shows.

So what’s changed? We’ve learned that the petitioning process for artists wasn’t super effective. None of our first 65 shows resulted from a petition reaching 1,000 votes. Rather, the shows came from artists hearing about DeepRockDrive from fans or through the music industry and deciding to innovate with us. So we’ve focused on making it easy to invite your friends to real shows, often times for free!

Now when you see a show on DeepRockDrive, it’s the real thing… the artist is truly on board and is going to perform live for a global audience. You can still encourage your favorite artists to perform a live interactive show at DeepRockDrive, though! Just tell them to contact us at our booking address and we’ll set them up for a global performance, no petitions, posters, or other hoops required.

The early results of this increased focus on real shows is exciting. We’ve teamed up with Pepsi to bring you a series of 5 free shows during May. Yesterday, we announced that DISTURBED would be performing our biggest show yet on May 29th! The real fun starts when you get a ticket to a show. For many paid shows (and all free ones), buying a ticket for yourself is going to come with an added bonus: an opportunity to bring your friends for free. And we’ve made inviting your friends easy, fast, and fun. On DeepRockDrive.com, you can give any friend’s email address to invite them. But if you’re a Facebook user, bringing friends to the show with you is even more fun. With this update, you log into DeepRockDrive with your email address. Use the email address and password that you entered when you set up your account. Once logged in, be sure to click the “Link Account to Facebook” link, pictured below. You’ll find it at the top of your DeepRockDrive.Once you enter your Facebook username and password, your accounts are linked! Anytime you want to invite your Facebook friends to a show, you’ll have the convenience of the Facebook friends interface. Just click the friends you want to join you at the show, and press the Send button… Your friends will get the invitation on Facebook and have an opportunity to join you at the show. We’ve enjoyed creating an entirely new interactive live concert experience togther with you over the past months. The first 65 shows at DeepRockDrive have been exciting for artists, fans, and us here at DeepRockDrive alike. Now it’s time to blow the doors off this joint with bigger shows, with committed artists, and instant access to invite your friends, for free, in support of the artists you love. We hope you enjoy the new site and Facebook app, and we’ll see you at the shows!
Apr
18th
Fri
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Bringing interactive live music to Facebook and beyond

Over 65 artists and thousands of fans have experienced a completely new form of live entertainment: interactive online concerts. From heavy metal to country western to rap to alternative rock to opera, every flavor of music has been touched by the idea of giving fans and artists fun tools to connect with each other during a live performance.

We’ve had so much fun bringing these ideas to life that we’re now ready to bring even more interactive online shows to bigger audiences around the world.

Today, DeepRockDrive proudly launches a completely new design and accompanying Facebook application!

We have a fantastic calendar of live concerts scheduled, including an upcoming free concert series sponsored by Pepsi featuring…

…and more.

Best of all, it’s easier than ever to go to live shows and invite your friends to join you for free! Whether you’re a member of the Facebook community or just surfing at DeepRockDrive.com, we’ve made it easy and fun to enjoy interactive live concerts wherever you happen to be.

We hope you enjoy the free interactive shows coming up at DeepRockDrive, and have fun inviting your friends to join you. We’ll see you at the show! 

Apr
17th
Thu
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Catching up with DeepRockDrive

Here at DeepRockDrive, we truly believe in community. Not just the community of music fans and artists that we’re building, but in other communities of people exchanging their ideas, photos, comments, music, messages, and art.

We spend quite a bit of time in communities around the Web, and they turn out to be great sources of information about who we are and what we’re doing here at DeepRockDrive. So I wanted to share a few of our favorite places to catch up with DeepRockDrive online (beside this blog):

For those fellow mid-80s electrogothpop fans out there, you’ll recognize the subject of this post as a riff on Depeche Mode’s 1985 release, “Catching Up with Depeche Mode.” In fact, I’m back to work on DeepRockDrive right now, because I just can’t get enough of it. If you’ve got other communities that you’d like to see DeepRockDrive reach out to either before or after our launch, let us know!

-Jeff