Hello Everyone,
We have some contractual requirements for distribution from Sam French that are fairly restrictive:
While the digital content distribution on TNEW will meet the password requirement, we are having difficulty finding ANY host that will meet the viewing requirements. The possible exception would be using Surfcode, but we are reluctant to move some of our content to another provider when we've invested so much in the Tessitura and website architecture. Vimeo and Youtube would not meet the requirements of this contract, and I am talking with AWS and LiquidWeb about what options we may have using them. Obviously fees and loss of revenue are a concern.
Is anyone else facing these types of contractual hurdles? How are you solving them?
Hi Alyssa!
We are going through this pain right now too. Luckily our first digital production isn't restricted by a rights holder like Sam French. But I am definitely hitting a roadblock of being able to find a video host that will allow us to use our own paywall (TNEW). A lot of hosts want to control the purchase path. Like you, we invest too much into Tessitura/TNEW to shift away from it. Plus, I don't like the idea of losing valuable patron/viewer data by being cut out of the purchase path.
I'm looking at Vimeo, PlayPlayTV, Brightcove and Wistia, but I'm not feeling super confident. We would like to have the video host do a lot of the technology heavy lifting since we don't really have the staff in-house to manage a web server/cloud server. And I have less than a month to sort this out before we want to put tickets on sale. Haha, no pressure!
Will definitely watch this thread to see if anyone else provides some insight.
Kristine
Yup, we are all in the same boat. There are a few other threads you can search in these forums where people make some great suggestions, but I've done a TON of research (I probably looked at 20 platforms) and here is what I have found that would be applicable.
The only one who will meet these requirements EXACTLY that I know of is PlayPlay.TV. You should also check out Broadway on Demand and MarqueeTV - I've spoken with all of them and BOD and Marquee will allow an embed into your site, (PlayPlay does not but would consider it and is working on a Tess integration, but it isn't standard). They will all allow you to sell your own tickets so you can use the functionality for sales you have already built with TNEW. All can do individual "codes" if you want. Not sure if either BOD or Marquee can limit to one viewing (PlayPlay has this functionality already) but can limit the time available to watch once the patron has started watching - like you would if you rented a movie on Amazon or iTunes etc. JW Player is another that can embed into TNEW and reasonably priced (as compared to Brightcove) - not sure if they can do the single play thing.
We have this language in one of our contracts and are negotiations to make the limitations based on time available instead of number of views (like once they start watching they can watch only for 24/48/72 hours). It is a ridiculous limitation and just not how people are consuming video at home. You probably already know this but my guess is you will be doing a lot of customer service/refunds/comping for those single play videos as patrons won't really pay attention and then they will be upset when they can't re-watch or watch a little, start later and then be unable to finish.
If you are embedding a player into your site, you are already meeting their passcode requirement, which is the fact that they will have to be logged in to watch the video - it is behind the tessitura password protected paywall. Please note that we DON'T use TNEW so I don't know a lot about it or this functionality. But we are facing the same issues as you are. If you decide to not embed the video in your site and just have the patrons go to the platform's page, the three you should look at are BOD, PlayPlay and Marquee.
I have a spreadsheet that outlines some detail on these issues on our finalists which are BOD, Marquee, Brightcove, PlayPlay and AWS, if you would like me to share it with you email me at buzzellj at sigtheatre dot org.
Good luck! It's certainly headache inducing
Hi Jennifer!
I'd love to take a peek at your spreadsheet! I'll shoot you an email!
Thanks!
Thank you! Yes, it is a headache, I'll make sure that we try for the same negotiations in future contracts. You hit the nail on the head: I'm much more worried about the patrons not being able to do something reasonable like skip ahead or back, and being extremely frustrated. I think we've looked at probably 10 platforms, spinning up a server somewhere, etc. The answer I'm hearing about that is this is something that would need to be done on an application level rather than the hosting level.
I will definitely email you and look into Marquee. I have a call with AWS on Friday. I also reached out to Playplay.tv. When I had spoken to them before, they were super flexible in terms of functionality or pricing, so I'm curious if this is something the would be able to do without sending people away from our TNEW site.
Yeah, mercifully we don't have any onerous contractual restrictions like.
I don't know if they offer those sorts of restrictions, but you might look into Eventive: we wound up not going with them (another, non-Tessitura, group on campus did). They seemed open to doing Tessitura integration, but we also sketched out an option for doing sales in Tessitura then exporting out ticketing info based on customer email address.
Jennifer Buzzell I'm wondering which platform you ended up going with? We're still trying to find one that fits all our reqs, which are similar to yours
We wound up using Overture (formerly Surfcode). Their customer service has been amazing, and we've integrated it with Tessitura (which was working great, until we were migrated to AWS Sunday night...>_< I'm hoping that issue will get resolved today.)