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
Hello - Initiating what I believe is a tangent on this conversation....
Because our first need for gated content is far more about reporting than earned income (hallelujah?), our initial forays into this will very likely only be about YouTube embeds. I just did a quick page set up so I can have an example to share with co-workers and immediately noticed that the YouTube iFrame embed code wrecks the responsiveness of the page. A quick Google gets me plenty of sympathetic posts about why it's silly this is still the case these days, but no quick fix.
Extremely relevant context: we use the Tessitura Quick Start Template, so the "edit your CSS" type solutions are not my ideal. I've worked around this before and have no problem doing so again if I have to, but shouldn't there be a less hack-y way forward than needing to write styles into the Source view of various content fields? Note that I'm also assuming this concern isn't unique to YouTube and that this is therefore something of interest to all of us monitoring this thread. Forgive me if this is a niche question that's irrelevant once there's cash involved and YouTube is out.
I'll return to Googling and working on how to adjust, but I'm wondering if anyone has already cracked it. Or perhaps there's a CSS option that can go quickly into the Quick Start Template?
Thanks for any tips.
Jamie
Hi Jamie! I know this is far from your dream scenario and still in somewhat “hack-y” territory, but I might be able to give you some CSS that would override the iframe display settings for all future YouTube embeds to make them responsive and maintain aspect ratio. So even though it’s kind of a hack, you could potentially set it and forget it. I’m working on this for pcs.org already.
Hi Jamie,
This doesn't answer your question (my apologies), but I do have a question for you: are you planning on hosting ticketed events on YouTube? Or is it free/PWYC content?I ask because as other users mentioned in this thread, it's come to my attention that selling YouTube URLs is technically a violation of YT's terms of service. It seems like a low probability, high impact situation: in that, the likelihood of being punished/having a video removed is low, but the consequences would be high. Just wondering where you are at... we are also thinking this through.
Lana
Hi Lana -
While I've flagged the TOS concerns for those typically responsible for this sort of thing, I'm comfortable moving forward with YT for this project because the income aspect is rather far removed. The majority of the videos involved are/will be already published elsewhere with no login required, and even this version has costs per video asset of $0. All of the videos (and other non-video assets) are resources for participants within a particular education program. Teachers et al will be able to register for the program either at a free level, or for a small fee that increases what they have access to. Some of the tools for the latter level are on YouTube, but we expect that teachers will need to distribute various urls to remote students and co-teachers and will make it clear that it is ok for them to do so. Our own Terms of Service will lay out that they can't republish it widely, nor profit from it, though.
The overarching frame for us is that we want some quantifiable numbers to go into fundraising and advocacy reports AND we want some sort of insider-feeling to participation like usual. So, the gated content gets us reportable transactions ("I want this particular video program") and a relationship. The likely framing for promotion will be about the relationship getting you support beyond the public content and the convenience of having all your resources compiled for you on one web page.
We will start from scratch in terms of considering video platform if/when there is a non-school usage, especially if dollars need to tie in. At this time, however, it doesn't look like we'll have Earned Income goals for our digital content--possible to do more free things but require registration, or add a donate request via One Page Giving. As a presenting organization and one focused on Theater for Young Audiences, our pandemic concentration has elevated Arts Education, since it can take so many shapes while kids' routines are so different.