We at the Houston Symphony are thrilled about the new gated digital content option that is coming down the pike in July, as we're all looking more towards livestreaming performances as a viable revenue option.
We have some pressing questions, however, because Houston is moving so quickly towards reopening. I'm afraid we can't wait until July to get these addressed. Is anyone from Tess or the community able to weigh in? Thanks so much.
Hi Kerry,
We are excited to be releasing this feature soon. I can help provide some clarification about the feature for you:
Will this gated digital content sales option be able to be sold as subscriptions as well, or is it only pay-per-view?
The Digital Content sales option will be available for individual performances, either sold as single tickets or a package. Digital Content visibility will be something you can limit to:
Does Tess email the unique link to each person when they make the purchase
You can use you Dynamic Email content to send a link to the content page, customers will have to log in to their account to view the content (and have purchased it as well)
Is it possible to set up triggered reminders (through Tess or through email platform--we use Wordfly) the day of the event?
You could certainly use WordFly or any of our ecosystem email partners to send a triggered email. The Digital Content will have a unique TNEW link that all customers use, but again will have to log-in to access.
What is the method by which staff sets up the YouTube or Vimeo link associated with the performance?
If you use YouTube or Vimeo, which are great choices, we recommend you upload them as Unlisted to your account, and then embed into our digital content page.
Are there any other third-party livestream platforms which have an API with Tessitura? I have researched ones such as InPlayer, Dacast, Uscreen, etc. and have not had luck finding one so far.
Right now, we are not supporting any API support for streaming applications, but are looking into it for some of the most frequently used providers. Unfortunately, many of these platforms prefer to provide their own gate and purchase path outside of TNEW or Tessitura.
Let me know if you have any other great questions!
Paul
Thanks for all of this information, Paul! Any word on when we can expect this update? I'm so grateful for all of the incredible new things the team has been pushing out.
Hi Maery,
We are currently targeting this for a July release. Right now, we have completed the development on the feature but are working with a new API method to handle restricting sale of items to a specific country for digital tax reasons, you should expect to see an update soon, and please let me or us know if you have any other thoughts or feedback on how we can better equip you for success!
hello Paul Kappel and the web products team. Will the Digital Content page allow for embed codes from other sites - like a DAM? The ballet uses Widen and would (for security) like to use a embed code from there (for non-live streamed content) rather than downloading and hosting on YouTube/Vimeo etc.
We are VERY excited for this and can't wait for the release!
--Michaela
Hi Michaela- The digital content page is something you will have full control over for each Event/Item. We have tested various <iframe> based embedding methods during testing and have had success with all of them.
You will be able to use the page to include embedded videos, links to other resources, or even a link to a private Zoom or GoToMeeting, depending on your needs. If it helps, I am including some mockups of the new Digital Content Hub and Digital Content page
That's great Paul, thank you. Widen's embed codes use <iframe> and I have had luck embedding into standard TNEW pages before, so I am fairly certain it will work, but I wanted to make sure and check.
Paul KappelI am not sure if this is a question that you can answer/this might be stupid question but....do you think that you or the web products team could give some thought to this use case.
We are considering how best as an organization we might want to launch the use of this new functionality, one of the ideas is this:
If we have to cancel future performances of things that we are currently selling due to re-opening logistics etc. How we would offer the current ticket holder special access to a pre-recorded "something". Ideally we would love a way to push the digital content to their accounts without them having to "buy" new access. Would there be a way to either back-end push digital content to the accounts of all current ticket holders so that it just appears and they don't have to do anything OR (and I can see this being waaaay more complicated) convert their current "event" to digital content. Similar use case with donors, if they have already given gifts at certain levels could we back-end push digital content to their accounts? Does any of this make any sense at all or am I getting way ahead of myself and the product?
There are absolutely no stupid questions!
We have designed the feature to work both for strictly digital events and in-person events that might have some value added digital content. So with your use case, you will be able to set a "Digital Content Enabled" property on any performance that was cancelled and then direct your customers to their new Digital Content Hub to view the special recording. The only gate that TNEW is providing is a check that the customer has purchased a ticket (and the date restrictions I mentioned previously).
With Donors, it would be a little more tricky, but you could seat them into a performance in Tessitura or use Pricing Rules to offer them a discounted or free purchase of the digital content.
This is super helpful in our planning..thank you. I look forward to seeing this functionality soon
I second Maery's thanks!
Is access for the purchaser just for the owner of the order or will constituents assigned as recipients be able to access this gated content as well? I suppose will customers be able to purchase multiple tickets for other people? If not is there a way to restrict it so that they can only select one ticket when purchasing?
Access will just be for the purchaser of the event, you could use the Seat Maximum Quantity property on a Product or Product Type level to limit the number of tickets that can be purchased.
Let me know if you think of anything else!
Thanks.
Hi Paul, this feature sounds great, and I'm sure it will be popular with all Tess users! Do you have any updates / progress towards a release date? Thanks, Vanessa
Hi Vanessa,
You can always check the status of our upcoming features on the TNEW Roadmap (https://www.tessituranetwork.com/en/Support/Roadmap/TNEW), we are currently targeting this feature for our 7.37 release later this month.
If you did not catch yesterday's Re|Visioning Business Update, there were lots of updates on upcoming TNEW and Tessitura features included. There should be a video posted here (https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Support/Resources/Videos) later today.
Thanks!