The DeepRockDrive Blog

Thank you for an amazing year of live events.

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:14:00 -0400

Thank you to the artists and fans that have helped DeepRockDrive bring interactive live events to global audiences online.

Together, we’ve produced over 85 events where online participants like you interacted with performers by shouting out your feedback, voting on setlists, and choosing the camera angles that brought you the experience you wanted. Check out some of the past shows.

It has been a thrill to create a new form of live entertainment with your help. At this time, we are not conducting live events.

If you have interest in contacting us about the DeepRockDrive live interactive experience, or partnering with us, please contact us here.

Thank you for your support,
The DeepRockDrive Team

Thanks for the magical Mötley Crüe moments

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:42:00 -0400

On August 1st, we all got a reminder of just how exciting live entertainment can be when Mötley Crüe took the state at the Mandalay Bay Event Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. But this was no ordinary show. It represented a first for Mötley Crüe, for DeepRockDrive, and for the live entertainment industry: this was the first show ever performed in front of a full-scale live audience at a world class venue and simulcast to a global audience via the Internet with DeepRockDrive’s groundbreaking interactivity. Mötley Crüe gave everyone online virtual front row seat.

It all started with an invitation from Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx:

At showtime, Mötley Crüe lit up the stage and the Internet at the same time. The participation from the fans online blew us away…

People from 60 countries around the world tuned in for the show. Over 8,600 people got to enjoy a free live show with a direct online connection to Nikki and the rest of the band. In a frenzy of interactivity, each of these fans gave Mötley Crüe over 70 pieces of digital feedback from shout-outs to Emotapplause. It was so intense during the show that over 630,000 events were received from fans to the band.

Whether you made it to the show or not, you can still join in some of the fun at Mötley Crüe’s virtual afterparty at DeepRockDrive.com. We’ve got highlight photos from the concert, dicussion forums to share your memories from the performance, and more.

Sure, the results from Crüe’s show are amazing. But that comes as no surprise because we know that these fans are passionate, and we’ve seen how powerful DeepRockDrive’s interactive live events can be for rallying those passionate fans from around the world. What changed with this concert was the potential for DeepRockDrive to reach every artist and every fan. DeepRockDrive’s interactive technology is no longer confined to a private venue… we have unleashed it on the world so that every performance can reach hungry fans on the Internet no matter where they are.

Your favorite DeepRockDrive shows are available on demand!

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:11:00 -0400

After every live show here at DeepRockDrive, fans shout,

“We want to see it again!”

We heard you, and we’ve been hard at work building on-demand replays of live interactive concerts.

We’re pleased to announce that you can now tune to http://www.deeprockdrive.com/vault and enjoy the first set of events on-demand. Every week, we’ll be adding more shows to the on-demand library. We hope you enjoy the shows!

Thanks,
DeepRockDrive

O.A.R. has a new album, All Sides, releasing in a month. They...

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:48:02 -0400

O.A.R. has a new album, All Sides, releasing in a month. They picked the perfect way to do their launch party: a live interactive concert at DeepRockDrive!

Where else could thousands of people gather to jam with O.A.R. in a global venue. People came from 19 countries including Australia, Bahamas, Bolivia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Germany, Italy, Republic of Korea, Kuwait, Malaysia, Netherlands, and the list goes on.

Everyone who came to the show got a chance to pre-order the new album and get the first two tracks instantly. If you missed the show, don’t worry because you can still visit O.A.R. at DeepRockDrive to order your copy, watch highlights from the show, and chat with other fans who were there live.

Live concerts are a blast, especially at DeepRockDrive....

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:01:06 -0400

Live concerts are a blast, especially at DeepRockDrive. Afterparties round the events out, when the VIPs get to hang out together talking about the show, comparing highlights, and sometimes even hanging with the artist.

As of today, DeepRockDrive is starting afterparties that never end! For our past interactive live events, you can jump into the afterparty to see highlight photos from the show, post links to your highlights, leave comments, and chat with friends in a discussion forum. You can subscribe to RSS feeds for afterparties that you want to watch closely.

Before I could even post this blog entry, fans from past shows had already found the afterparty pages and started their own discussions. We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Motion City Soundtrack Live and interactive with a global...

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:42:23 -0400

Motion City Soundtrack

Live and interactive with a global audience online, June 11, 2008.

351,362 interactive events (an average of 88 per participant!). 49,424 set list votes tallied. 36 countries participated including Korea, Malaysia, Uruguay, Venezuela, Ireland, Guatamela.

Check out a thank-you video from the band and grab a signed setlist here!

Thanks for joining Motion City Soundtrack and DeepRockDrive for a great show, brought to us free by Pepsi.

Widgets coming out of every O.A.R.ifice

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:09:00 -0400

Monday, June 16th brings O.A.R. (OfARevolution) to DeepRockDrive for a live, interactive online concert. A lot of people are really excited about this show, as O.A.R. has a passionate online following of fans.

To help spread the word, we decided to have a little widget-making contest here at DeepRockDrive to see which members of our team - developers, designers, talent relations - make the best widgets. Here’s what some of our talented folks came up with…

Thanks to a cool site called Sprout Builder, these widgets are really fun to build and spread. You can take any of our ideas above and embed them in your blog, MySpace page, Facebook profile, or anywhere on the web that you want to invite your friends to join you for free at the O.A.R. show. These widgets are fun, simple, and powerful… just like interactivity at a DeepRockDrive live event!

While we had fun building our widgets, I have a hunch that you can do better. So the widget-building challenge is now officially extended to the public! Between now and the beginning of the O.A.R. show on June 16th, anyone can leave a comment here with a link to their O.A.R. show widget. There are only 4 rules:

The widget has to link back to the O.A.R. page at DeepRockDrive with this URL: http://www.deeprockdrive.com/event/5473/o.a.r.?ref=coarntest
“DeepRockDrive” must appear somewhere on the widget.
The date (June 16th) and time (5:00pm PDT) must appear somewhere on the widget.
When you leave a comment to register your entry, you have to be a registered commenter (registration is free and only takes a sec). By registering with a valid email address, I’ll be able to get in touch with the winner to get your prize to you.

WHOA - a prize? Oh yes, what good is a contest without a prize? The lucky and talented winner of the coolest widget design will receive a limited edition, authentic, custom DeepRockDrive Zippo lighter! Yeah, have a look at this beauty…

All you have to do is spend a few minutes making the coolest O.A.R. at DeepRockDrive widget, and it’ll be shipped straight to your home (sans lighter fluid for safety, of course).

The winning entry will be announced at the O.A.R. show on 6/16 exactly thirty minutes before showtime (4:30pm PDT). Watch the space above the video window as you’re getting ready to interact with O.A.R. during their live online concert. If your name and widget link appears, you’ve won yourself a piece of DeepRockDrive history!

Tonight, something big happened at DeepRockDrive. Really big. As...

Thu, 29 May 2008 10:59:00 -0400

Tonight, something big happened at DeepRockDrive. Really big. As part of the Pepsi Free Concert Series, we hosted our first multi-platinum artist, DISTURBED. While we never could have expected what happened during the show, we were sure thrilled to see it happen.

First, DISTURBED put on an absolutely amazing performance. These guys sell records and draw live crowds because they are talented. But we expected that.

Over 10,000 people showed up online to participate in the show. We kinda expected that, too, since we sold out an initial batch of virtual tickets and had to add servers to our datacenter to handle extra capacity for more online fans.

What blew us away completely what the unimaginable frenzy of interactivity that emerged during the show. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, because we’ve built a a live experience that is truly fun. When you give passionate fans the tools to interact directly with an artist like DISTURBED, of course they’re going to use them. But in just over 60 minutes, they used them at a rate that astounded us in the best of ways…

Over 1,300,000 interactive events took place during the show. Yeah, over a million!
Fans shouted out their thoughts, in freeform text, over 350,000 times.
Fans threw “Emotapplause” animations onto the display screen wrapping DISTURBED’s stage over 915,000 times. There were peaks of over 1,100 Emotapplause per second!
When it came time to vote for an encore, over 5,000 people cast a vote in less than 10 seconds.
It must be OK to be fashionably late, because over 2,000 people grabbed tickets and rushed the virtual doors halfway through the show!
DeepRockDrive’s virtual venue filled with fans from 71 countries around the world. That’s over a third of all the countries that exist (this has happened at two shows now).

DISTURBED fans from around the world got an entirely new perspective on what a live concert can be like when fans get to interact with artists. We’d like to thank DISTURBED and Pepsi for helping to bring this show to fans for free.

Above, you’ll find some highlight clips that showcase not only what an amazing show DISTURBED puts on, but how much fun the interactive experience can be. But don’t watch it here… head over and watch or download the hi-def version. It looks and sounds amazing, just like a DeepRockDrive live concert.

Please join us in the front row online at one of DeepRockDrive’s upcoming live concerts!

A while back, I shared the thinking behind what makes...

Thu, 22 May 2008 18:45:00 -0400

A while back, I shared the thinking behind what makes DeepRockDrive online concerts “interactive.” There’s no better way than to experience it firsthand in one of the upcoming DeepRockDrive shows.

Thanks to our interactive director, Bertrand Paré, we’re pleased to offer this guided tour of the interactive features that make every show at DeepRockDrive truly unique. Click here for a downloadable, full-size version of the clip.

Enjoy, and we’ll see you in the front row!

The Pepsi Free Concert Series is in full swing at DeepRockDrive

Tue, 20 May 2008 22:12:00 -0400

Earlier this month, we announced an exciting partnership with Pepsi to bring a series of five free interactive concerts online at DeepRockDrive to live music enthusiasts worldwide. The Pepsi free concert series is off to an amazing start, and we hope you’ll join us for one of the remaining shows!

The first show in the series featured break-out country artist Lady Antebellum.

Not only was Lady Antebellum’s interactive show at DeepRockDrive fantastic (click the picture above for a slideshow), but just two days later they went on to win the Academy of Country Music’s prestigious best new artists award. Along with our thanks for a great interactive concert, we send out our congratulations to Lady Antebellum for their much deserved ACM wins!

The momentum carried on as a truly global audience of fans welcomed YouTube-born sensation Marié Digby to the interactive DeepRockDrive stage.

Marié showed just how powerful the Internet is for bringing fans together from faraway places. Her show drew people from 66 countries around the globe. That’s 1/3rd of all the countries on the planet! From the Poland to Panama, from Chile to China, from to Saudi Arabia to Singapore, thousands of people from every culture accepted Marié’s invitation to interact with her during her live concert in ways that are only possible at DeepRockDrive.

These shows are just the beginning! The Pepsi Free Concert Series continues through May and into June with more fantastic artists…

Lloyd (hip-hop / rap) on May 25th at 4:00pm Pacific time
Matt Nathanson (pop / rock) on May 27th at 7:00pm Pacific time
Disturbed (hard rock) on May 29th at 7:00pm Pacific time (note: Disturbed sold out our capacity, so we added more servers and have opened up another round of free tickets. You’ll want to get your tickets for this show quickly!)
Vince Freeman (acoustic) on June 1st at 1:00pm Pacific time
Motion City Soundtrack (rock) on June 11th at 7:00pm Pacific time
Marc Cohn (acoustic pop) on June 12th at 7:00pm Pacific time

The shows are so popular that we’ve added a few extras to the series! A special thanks goes out to Pepsi, whose partnership enables us to bring you these interactive concerts for free. When you combine DeepRockDrive’s innovation in interactive live concerts with Pepsi’s passion for bringing music to people around the world, fans like you win.

Drop by DeepRockDrive and grab a ticket to an upcoming show. We’ll see you in the front row!

What makes DeepRockdrive online concerts "interactive?"

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:29:00 -0400

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.

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…

You 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.

We’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…”

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!

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:

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.

Wow - things are different around here!

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:13:00 -0400

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!

Bringing interactive live music to Facebook and beyond

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:11:33 -0400

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…

Mindi Abair (Jazz)
Marié Digby (Pop)
Lloyd (Hip-Hop, Rap)
Matt Nathanson (Pop, Rock)

…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!

Catching up with DeepRockDrive

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:15:00 -0400

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):

The DeepRockDrive Facebook Group grows every day. Here, we share pictures, stories, and announcement about upcoming shows and site enhancements for artists and fans.
Hundreds of artists, quickly growing to thousands, have befriended DeepRockDrive on MySpace.
The DeepRockDrive photo pool on Flickr carries a nonstop stream of photos from around our studio, including shots of our live test performances!
Do you tweet? If so, tune into the DeepRockDrive Twitter feed by making us your friend on Twitter.
Last.FM is a great source of music exchange for fans of all types of music. We have a Last.FM group where we share interesting new music pics.

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