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 Andrew and Gregory, Glad this was raised, as it's been on my mind. I'm wondering if either of you (or anyone) has seen instances of YouTube cracking down on this clause in their TOS? I ask as I'm concerned... but also I have seen fairly large businesses use this as their exact business model (Streamkick being one: http://www.streamtick.com/) and if they've not been shut down, I wonder what the liabilities are.
Hi Lana - that's a very good question. We have not yet begun to deliver on our paid digital, but I do wonder how big of an issue the TOS really are - since 3rd party paywalls seem to be pretty agnostic around the embedded assets it's probably under the radar. I would imagine that the real issue may be bandwidth, where if you are causing a strain on the system because of a heavily-viewed stream, it might get looked into.
But of course I'm new to this and don't really know how it works -- I'd be curious to hear from anyone who had these kinds of issues!
Hello everyone!
We are hoping to sell something digital content and I just wanted to check and see if anyone who uses Vimeo, specifically, and have been selling digital content via Tessitura, has run into any issues?
Our first concert is most likely going to be mid/late September, but we might need to sell before the new gated feature is released, but will pivot (hopefully) for all future streamed concerts in the fall.
Hi Lynn,
Would you mind sharing your contact at Eventive? I am thinking Tessitura inquiries in number might help the evolution of their product and our pricing.
Thanks
Susan
HI Logan, apologies for the delay. Eventive still remains our choice and we're in -- hopefully -- the final stages of getting this thing going with them. Until we have contracts and other legal stuff in place, Eventive and Tessitura can't begin work, though they are still hopeful that they can easily get the APIs to talk. We are on sale September 8 and have resigned/preparing ourselves for plan B to start: to sell through TNEW until a cutoff time to be determined, extract the ticketholders from Tessitura, upload them to Eventive to show entitlement to watch, then have further sales go through Eventive (Stripe). We'll have to download the names after the show and get them into Tessitura so we may communicate with and market to them. We're crossing our fingers that that doesn't go on for more than a few weeks, though. Stay tuned, I'll update here as soon as we are finalized and work begins.
Good morning Becky. We are steering clear of those for that reason. With Eventive (who we are hopefully going to use as a platform) and even Vimeo, it isn't a problem.
Hi All,
In light of everyone's interest, I wanted to be sure to follow up and note that we have just released the Gated Digital Content feature to TNEW TEST Sites. Using and testing it out will require that you have at least Tessitura 15.1.13. We are still working on the help system but in the meantime, here is the pre-release documentation:
Please let us know if you have any feedback or questions, we do have an upcoming Pop-Up Skill Builder next week that I will be leading if you want to learn more about configuring the feature as well: https://community.tessituranetwork.com/events/c/e/525
Thanks,
Paul
Good morning Susan. Sure thing: it is Iddo Patt <iddo@eventive.org>. He has been super so far, really nice guy.
Hey all,
What a useful and informative thread! Thanks everyone for all the research and collaboration around this topic.
I have a question on a slightly different vein regarding selling digital content, which is what are people doing for ticket fees on digital content sales? Are you keeping fees the same as for in-person events? Specifically for those that use percentage based fees or scale the fee amounts based on ticket price, are you using the same or lower percentages? We are planning to use a "pay what you can" model for our digital content sales and I'm wondering if anyone has gotten feedback from customers about having a fee on top of a "pay what you can" ticket price.
Thanks!
Sarah Covie
Hello again to everyone following along with this great thread started by Andrew.
One additional update that our blog post about planning your strategy, that contains som provider partners to consider is now posted here: https://www.tessituranetwork.com/en/Items/Articles/Tech/2020/Digital-Content
Thanks again!
We are removing fees from our streaming performances. Our prices are going to be $XX per person watching up to four (honor system -- and social experiment), then we are also offering an average price option based on if they had attended an in-person performance which will be higher than $YY, for those who can afford more. We made a decision to not use Pay What You Can right now, but we may re-evaluate in the future.
--L
Hi all, in this very informative and interesting thread, please remember to be mindful of anti-trust laws that prohibit activity that may be construed as price-fixing, or other coordination around pricing. You may read more in our anti-trust statement.
Best,
Todd LantryTessitura Network
Good reminder Todd, thanks, and for adjusting my reply. Sorry for forgetting that.
Agreed, thanks for the reminder - I will just clarify that what I'm curious about is if people are using the same or different models for ticket fees for digital content vs. in person concerts so definitely don't need pricing or fee details! Lynn, thanks for your response, interesting to hear that you're going without fees entirely on those digital performances.
Thanks,Sarah
Hi everyone, this is a fantastic thread and so helpful - thank you!
Now that the TNEW Gated Content is out on LIVE - has anyone given any thought to how Guest Checkout plays into all this? I would assume that anyone with a Guest Checkout account cannot access the content because they don't have a login. Are you planning on turning Guest Checkout off in the standard purchase path (we still need it for One Page Giving) while selling Digital Content?
Similarly, if you have major donors/Board members who should receive access to a specific piece of content (it's Nutcracker for us), can we processed comp tickets on their accounts to grant them access? Does anyone have VIPs who just never use TNEW and don't know their logins? Trying to think through if it would be easier to try and get them setup to access the content via TNEW or if we should just keep a separate list of VIPs who should get the content via a direct link to the content provider.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Lily