00:00Welcome everybody. It is so nice to be here with you all. So many trailblazers and thought leaders
00:08and power players and devoted students of live entertainment. Billboard has been hosting this
00:14conference for more than a decade, bringing together the leaders of live music to learn
00:19from one another, to connect, network, to have a healthy debate or two. Just please, agents,
00:26no fistfights this year. And please do participate though, ask questions and get to know as many
00:33people as possible. So to kick things off, I want to rewind to what was unquestionably the most viral
00:40concert moment of the year, if not the decade. And then I'm going to introduce you to an artist
00:48manager who's taking that same technology behind that moment and he's running with it in a very
00:54exciting new direction. So I'm going to play a quick video first so I can show you what I'm talking
00:59about.
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01:44So, let's get started.
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01:48Let's see you.
01:48Let's go.
01:49Let's go.
02:50You just saw playing for 5,000 fans at the shrine and the visionary behind this idea to give fans control of the kiss cam.
02:59Welcome, Nick.
03:00So, Nick, how did you come up with this idea to let fans create what they're seeing on the big screen?
03:12So, with the Bunt project, it's been a huge emphasis for the fans to be part of the show.
03:18And we started it off with basically a DJ table in the middle of the room with no barriers.
03:22And we had this idea.
03:24It was kind of like stemmed off of Boiler Room where you had fans in a 360 manner and you wanted to celebrate that moment of fans being a part of the show.
03:34So, we got to a place with a shrine where we started to grow so significantly that we started to have to put barriers in and we put the DJ in the middle of the room.
03:43And so, we had this really awkward problem of we got to this place by celebrating the fan, but how do we bring the fan into a larger show?
03:50And so, there was this company, Point of View, V-Y-O-U, that we reached out to and they've done stuff with, like, Billie Eilish and James Cameron and Coachella and a bunch of others.
04:01And they're like, look, we have this idea that we haven't been able to find an artist to execute, but we want to build a system where we create iPhones that can patch into our iMac system.
04:11And we think that we can celebrate the fan by capturing them in their moment.
04:14And in the ideation phase, coming back to the Kiss Cam with Coldplay, although the novelty of that moment, which is scandalous, happened, the reality is the Kiss Cam was a novelty idea at live events because it actually celebrated its, like, simple, pure human emotion of love.
04:31You wanted to give, receive, or witness.
04:34And so, the Kiss Cam would go up at a sporting event, everyone would look up to the Jumbotron, and if it hit you and your partner, you'd immediately do what's most natural to you.
04:41You would pose for the moment to live in truth.
04:45And with the idea of the iPhones, you have this, like, I don't know how deep we want to get into dance music, but the surface level, we're having a problem right now with people pulling out their phones and just putting it in DJ's faces and viewing the show.
04:58And we're like, how can we turn those phones around?
05:00So, coming back to the Kiss Cam, we're like, man, wouldn't it be so cool if we could capture the eye of the storm with people having their phones in the middle of a mosh pit, or having their phones with them and their friends as they're having the best time of their life to one of the songs, or, you know, capturing a Kiss moment.
05:14And with as much as you will not believe me saying this, we didn't plant that Kiss.
05:18We gave the phones out to fans at the shrine, and I'm looking at the operating table where we have our DP, and we're like, camera three has this Kiss Cam going on.
05:28And I thought it was one of our operators, because we had a blend.
05:30We had nine cameras plus our iPhones.
05:33Okay, and how did you pick the fans to give the phones to?
05:36I'll make this quick.
05:39There's four brand cornerstones for Bunt, Smile, Sweat, Squad, and Soccer.
05:42And so, we have these, like, soccer pop-ups that we do where we felt there was, like, Venn diagram overlap of fans that were enthusiastic about soccer and also liked Bunt.
05:52And, you know, to bridge the gap between fans and artists, we wanted to celebrate, what if instead of buying a ticket to a concert or giving, we allow fans to do something together?
06:03And so, we've been doing these soccer pop-ups along the way.
06:06Coming to that question, there's a hardcore group of fans that you couldn't bring a plus one.
06:12You had to come to the soccer event solo.
06:14And we did a soccer event two years ago, and they became huge fans of Bunt, but also friends of each other.
06:23And so, we have a, I personally have a WhatsApp group going with these fans where I said, hey, I have this idea.
06:28Are you guys coming to Shrine?
06:29Wow.
06:29I need you to hold some iPhones for us and film yourself in the moment.
06:32So, those are actually our fans that have been kind of building with us for the last two years.
06:38So, what were you hoping to achieve, and what were the metrics of success?
06:43Do you feel like you've met the goal?
06:46Yeah, I do.
06:47I think that it's hard to quantify, like, statistically.
06:50Like, we were hoping to achieve 20% more engagement with our shows.
06:53But I think it's just this idea of, like, as the shows get bigger and you have to create basic barriers for protection at shows, you know, 5,000 capacity, 20,000 capacity, whatever it is, how can you keep fans engaged in it?
07:06And I think that I saw some panel stuff that you guys will talk about later today about the evolution of live visuals and screens and all these other things.
07:13But I think that we're also in this era where you can build network systems to patch into people's iPhones.
07:19You can find ways to utilize people if they want to be part of the show to bring them into the fold and allow them to be part of the show.
07:25So, I think that my hope for this is that not only do we recreate this at future bunch shows, but you can see, like, this is probably a hotbed issue that I don't even want to get into, but you can see with, like, AI sorting on editing software, if you're at a festival that does this on a large scale and you're a DP and you're like, we want people kissing, all of a sudden it sorts the best people kissing in the crowd and you can throw that up on an iMac.
07:48So, I feel like I'm seeing an evolution happen already that we wanted to be part of and we were just able to execute it first.
07:54Yeah. And so, do you plan to do this at all of Bunn's future shows?
07:59It's really complicated right now. We're building networks so that we can do it on primary shows. We're going to do it in Munich in a couple weeks.
08:06Okay.
08:07But it's still something that this is, like, in its infancy on being able to build out. And so, we still have to go through the trial and error phase and it's also really costly to do it.
08:16But you basically have to build an internal system within the venue that can patch these things in with your iMac system.
08:21So, long answer, but short answer is yes.
08:25How much did it cost?
08:27A lot of money. We invested a lot of money at the Shrine on production, as you could see in that clip, but we invested even more money at the Shrine with our camera work.
08:35I mean, there's a much longer dialogue and I'll give you the highlight where basically we did a lot of Palooza this year and it was an epiphany moment for us where we spent tons on time-coded visuals.
08:45And we got to stage and I was there to celebrate with my friends. He was there to celebrate and I looked up at our visuals and they were off by a second.
08:52And I ran to the front of the house and I was like, why are our visuals off?
08:56Like, there's a critical error with the feed coming from the festival to our rig.
09:01And I was like, we can't fix this right now. How many cameras do we have?
09:04Like, we have nine because we're on the Hulu live stream, so let's combine our cameras and those.
09:08And we flipped the cameras around that were set up for live stream onto the fans.
09:13We caught human emotion. I'll tell you one quick story.
09:16We basically, I was calling cameras and we saw this girl that was about to cry.
09:21And it was a happy cry. Like, you could 100% tell she loved Bunch.
09:25She was front row. She was ready to, like, live in the moment for her favorite song.
09:29And I was like, let's go to her on the drop. Go to the girl that's about to cry on the drop.
09:33And we went to the girl. I, like, started celebrating in the booth.
09:36And I was like, oh my God, what if she doesn't want to be crying on the iMag, you know, this is a 40-foot screen.
09:42And I was like, go off of her.
09:43And so she pulled a friend in and she looked up at the screen.
09:47She's like, wait, what happened? What happened?
09:48I was like, go back to the crying girl. Go back to the crying girl.
09:51But capturing those human emotions was like this light bulb moment where we were doing it for social media, but we weren't doing it live.
09:57And once we figured that out, that's what eventually led to me asking questions to, you know, friends at, like, point of view.
10:03Where it's like, could we do something?
10:05And he's like, we had this idea. Maybe we can execute it.
10:08Right. Thank you so much, Nick, for joining us.
10:11Yeah, of course.
10:13We've been getting it.
