Hello,
We are looking at different ways to sell digital live stream content this season, and since TNEW's gated digital content feature has been moved to release in late August, I am wondering if any Tessitura users out there can share what they are doing now to sell gated content, particularly if you are using Tessitura/ TNEW for the sales path, and connecting to a third party stream from there somehow? What I am currently envisioning is selling on Tessitura/ TNEW, and then emailing a link to ticket buyers close to the time of a performance. Of course there are easy ways to break through the gate with this method, for example if we use VIMEO, where the password or direct link could be shared with non-buyers. While I'm not incredibly concerned about the dishonesty of our ticket holders forwarding their direct links along to other people, I'd love to know others' experiences and approaches have been with this. Or, maybe there is something simple that I am missing which would allow me to make the streaming more secure.
For Tessitura staff - We are looking to begin selling gated content before the TNEW release, but the actual performances may take place after the release, and so in addition to any third party workarounds that Tessitura users can provide, would we be able to take a performance sold before the release and convert it to a gated digital performance?
I have been searching the community forums and have not found a recent discussion on how people are selling gated content currently, and so if there is already one in progress that I missed, I'd love to be linked to it.
Thanks for your help, and I hope everyone is staying healthy out there!
Andrew
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!
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.