MSN to Webcast Live Concerts

By Geoff Duncan September 27, 2006

Microsoft’s MSN Video has inked an exclusive, multiyear deal to offer liveand on-demand streaming of live concerts from Control Room, the company behind the live Webcast of last year’s Live 8 concert events. Under the agreement, MSN will exclusively Webcast 36different live concert events, which will also be available for on-demand viewing for a fixed period of time after the event. The shows will be available on MSN’s 42 worldwide sites, and kick offOctober 2 with John Legend at London’s Royal Albert Hall, followed shortly by a New York City concert by John Mayer.

(We’re assuming the concert offerings will not exclusively be tied to performers named “John.”)

“By working with Control Room to add original, exclusive content, we create an even deeper engagement with our global audience, thus unveiling significant new opportunities for advertisers,” said Rob Bennett, general manager of Entertainment and Video Services for MSN. “With this collaboration, artists now have an extremely valuable, cohesive, global marketing and promotion avenue to reach and connect with fans worldwide, while in turn it creates another key access point for consumers to get high-quality content from the musicians they love.”

Live music performances might be a good way for Microsoft to draw both Internet-user and advertiser attention to its online video offerings, and the exclusively nature of the agreement may help differentiate MSN Video from similar offerings from Yahoo, Google, and other Internet heavyweights.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

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