Gated Content Workarounds via Tessitura

To add to this thread....I am wondering if there is any indication of WHEN in late August? We had really hoped to be able to use this for an event at the end of the month (August).

Hope you are all well!

Michaela 

I'm also in the same boat, I have to start selling gated content in Mid-July but it won't be available for consumption until later in the fall. We are also only streaming our content for an amount of time. I do know that some of this information impacts artist contracts because we have to convince them that content and links can't be shared easily.

This is also a concern of mine. The gated content offering from Tessitura was going to help with a lot of issues and now I am really concerned about the timeline shift. 

Hi Andrew - 

There have been many members who have been successfully selling digital content via Tessitura & TNEW - and pretty much in the manner in which you describe above.

While other members of the community will have more hands-on suggestions, we have created some great resources that might be helpful to you to get you started:

https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Help_System/Content/Performance%20Setup/Digital%20Content.htm

https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Items/Videos/Webinars/2020/PopUpSkill_TNEW_Donations_Digital

Regarding your question about selling performances before the release and then converting them to a gated digital content once that feature is available - yes - this will be very easy to do especially if you associate the performances you are selling as digital content with a specific perf type. Once we release the digital content functionality, you will be able to easily configure those performances at the product type level in TNEW to be accessible as digital content by enabling the digital content functionality and then configuring some simple rules around when a customer can access the content (all the time, X days after purchase, X days before the performance, etc.). 

If you have further questions on how to best prepare for the conversion, let us know. 

Thanks for reaching out and hope you are doing well!

Nara

Hi Michaela - good to hear from you and hope you are doing well.

I know a lot of our members have been eagerly awaiting the new gated digital content feature via TNEW and so the delay of the release is understandably disappointing. We recognize that and are doing everything we can to get this released as soon as we can but we need to add stronger support for digital goods tax reporting and also more restrictive access controls. 

We are currently targeting for last week in August for the release of this feature so unfortunately it sounds like a bit too tight for your August event. Are you looking to sell the event in late August or is the event itself in late August? Wondering if there are some opportunities with what is available now through TNEW/Tessitura similar to what Andrew proposed above that could work in the interim? 

All best,
Nara

Hi Gregory - as with Michaela - I know you have been looking forward to our release of the gated digital content path on TNEW. We are working hard to get it in our community's hands as soon as we can. 

If the digital content won't actually be available for consumption until fall, you can sell it now via Tessitura and TNEW, and then once we have released the feature, you can easily configure those same performances using product types in TNEW to be accessible as digital content. We would just recommend that you associate those performances with a separate perf type in Tessitura to make this configuration easier. Let me know if there is any additional information we can provide to you to help! 

All best,
Nara

A couple of follow up questions:

1.) Will this have a timed function where when something is bought the video is available for a certain amount of days/hours after purchase? This ability in particular affects contract negotiations with artists. 

2.) Is there another option that just makes the event available for a static amount of time? example: available for one week in November? I'm assuming we can also manually just turn it off if that isn't the case.

3.) My marketing team is wondering if once links are embedded will the video controls display such that videos could be played on Apple TV.

Hi Gregory - great questions!

1. Yes - you will be able to configure access based on purchase date at the product type and product level by setting it to be X days after the order date. You won't be able to configure based on hours, only days. 
   
   
2. Yes - you will be able to configure access based on product date allowing you to configure a set amount of time before and/or after the performance date for the content to be accessed just as you describe. So, for instance, if you want to make the content available from November 8 - November 14, you could set the performance date to November 8 and then configure the product type or performance in TNEW to have content available from the date of the performance for an additional 6 days. Depending on how varied your access rules will be across digital content, you should consider how best to arrange your performances by perf type to make configuration a bit easier.
   
   
3. I believe the level of controls displayed in embedded content is dependent on the content provider and the configuration options. However, while I am no Apple TV expert, I don't believe that Apple TV supports browsing the web via Safari which is what would be required to access the digital content page on TNEW. My understanding from the brief search I did is that a customer would need to airplay from an apple device (ipad, Mac, etc.) to AppleTV. You might want to do a little experimenting with that. 

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any more questions!

Nara

Thanks very much, Nara, for your direct reply.  I'll take a look at the resources you had provided, and I look forward to any advice from the Tessitura community on different third party streaming platforms that might work as a temporary solution.

Hi Everyone,

Following up with a few more questions and findings that I have made over the past few weeks on selling digital content --

- We are planning a sales launch soon for paid, digital performances, with the first performance in late September.  As Tess/TNEW users, we are launching sales with Tessitura and are planning to use the upcoming TNEW gate.  The performances will have a mixture of recorded and live components, and be available for a few days after the initial performance.

- A word of caution on Vimeo Premium (which is currently their $75/ month subscription option that allows for live streaming).  Their user agreement prohibits the sale/monetization of digital content on your premium account except via their payment systems, such as Vimeo On Demand, Enterprise, or (what we found to be) a very expensive custom arrangement.  So, according to our conversations with Vimeo reps, it is against their user agreement to simply share around a Vimeo link to paying customers or embed behind the upcoming TNEW paywall.  Of course, depending on the scale of your video, you might get away with it.

- Regarding the video player embed -- We are fortunate to have access to a professional Wowza account from a production company we are working with on the streaming end of things, and they will provide the Wowza Player <iframe> embed for us, to put behind whatever gate we choose (our plan is TNEW's new feature).  As luck would have it, that Wowza Player is getting discontinued after January 5, 2021 -- I am curious to know what other video players organizations are using that are not incredibly expensive and allow you to monetize the content without restrictions -- after this initial set of paid content is over, we will likely be looking to bring the player setup in-house.  I am particularly interested in players that are user friendly and/ or are inexpensive.

- I have been researching and had good conversations with a rep from InPlayer, which is a paywall agnostic to the video player, and their workaround for Tessitura users, while not ideal, seems reasonable as a relatively inexpensive way to put a gate in front of the stream.  Similar to a box office consignment relationship, we would provide them with our Tessitura sales in advance of the show.  InPlayer then assigns voucher codes to patrons who purchased via Tessitura in advance, but you would need to use their payment system close-to the event.  The patron would still need to create a separate account outside of Tessitura to access the stream, but the InPlayer account is specific to your organization.  So not ideal, but apparently they work with Tessitura users -- I'd love to hear from anyone who has experienced working with InPlayer.  We're hoping we won't need to use this option at all.

- I found the documentation link on digital content setup that Nara posted in this chat to be helpful as a guide for building everything. 

Thanks, and onward!

Andrew

Oh my gosh Andrew Moreau (Past Member)! Thank you for sharing this! I had no idea about these restrictions on VImeo, very concerning indeed. As it happens we had a meeting with Brightcove today and they quoted a pretty big number that gave some colleagues pause but now I see why they are charging so much. Sounds like vimeo is a hasstle to deal with. The Wowza thing sounds interesting but being discontinued. We need to all the transactions to happen on Tessitura/TNEW becuase we are encouraging folks to use On Account monies. Any other ideas out there for streaming services? 

I hope other organizations see this info so they don't potentially have their Viemo content removed while patrons are trying to enjoy it!

Thanks, Gregory.  It seems we are traveling in similar paths as we had an introductory Brightcove meeting earlier this month as well.  I'd love to stay in touch with you  on this matter so we can learn from each other's research, mistakes, and (of course) successes! 

That's for the great update Andrew.  We have used Brightcove in a collaboration we just did using their account and things went very smoothly.  We are talking with Brightcove about getting our own account.  At the moment we use issuu for our educational streaming and resource delivery.

Thanks for the tip on issuu, Heath.   Curious to know if you sold issuu content via Tessitura, and how the connection between issuu and Tessitura worked?

I hear Brightcove is great, and I'd love to see any examples if you move forward with your own account.

Hi Gregory and Andrew,

This is great research and a good resource as we prepare to release our TNEW Digital Content feature. One option that might be the easiest to explore is YouTube as it does permit unlisted embedding of videos. 

Gregory, we are currently doing analysis into a feature to support the use of On Account payment method balances for purchasing TNEW products, so it sounds like your strategy would work well to wait for our Digital Content feature.

With Issuu, assuming you can get an iframe, it would be supported by our Digital Content feature as well, great tip, Heath!

Thanks,
Paul