Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome to the Guide to live. It's Tuesday, October 29th. This is your weekly hangout to join us to talk about live streaming with people who really know what it's like.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Because let's face it, no one really knows what you're talking about if you say you're a live streamer.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Yeah, but we do. So I'm Tara and across from me is my co host Ben. And together we make up your guide to Live.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: On today's podcast, we talk about the new Ringling Brothers Circus and how it's using audience engagement. And we examine how for most of human history, the gap between creating and consuming entertainment has been immediate.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: And as demand for high quality production grew, attention shifted to more pre recorded media with longer production times and time between creation and consumption. But now we see that timeline shrinking back to zero, partly thanks to short form content and posting the same day. And now especially through live streaming, where interaction can be instant.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: So are we hardwired for live real time consumption? And could this be the thing that drives live to be the total dominant entertainment form in the near future?
[00:01:12] Speaker A: I don't know. Let's find out.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Plus we talk about Live Fest, obviously. Yes, it's starting. And question of the day from the uk.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Oh yeah, let's do it. Let's go.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: I would say let's have the cat in because he's poorly.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: He's poorly.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: He's a wounded animal, poor little guy. He's. He's a tripod at the moment.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: So let's start this episode by send or sending our warmest wishes to Hawk the cat who is allowed into the podcasting recording studio for today and today only because. Because he broke his foot and as.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: We speak he's hobbling on me with one with three legs.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: It's kind of, it's.
[00:01:53] Speaker A: He won't put pressure down on that broken paw, which I don't blame him. It hurts.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: He looks pitiful.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: He really does. He looks so, so pitiful. I just want to put it. I want to get one of those like baby wraps that you can get and I just want to put him in the baby wrap and just carry him around with me all day and nurse him like a little baby.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah. If anyone not nurse him, there's so many live streamers who work from home, essentially. There must be a lot of studio cats. Now the percentage of studio cats and dogs have gone up in the world because normally they be kept out. But home studios, home live streaming.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I know, I know. One of the creators in Our. In our network who has a studio parrot.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah. That. Well, that's a feature of the stream as well.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
One day we were, we were talking and the parrot just swooped right by us.
It was fun.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: It seems like in short form there was. There were a lot of famous short form pets.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: But that's gonna be harder to do live streaming.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Because you can make it. You can kind of capture a cute moment of a cat looking goofy. And that's an edit video.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: You can edit it together so it looks like the cat sits. Sat still the whole time, which it did not.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: But I, I don't think it. I've thought about this before. Like, let's bring the animals. Let's do like a segment where we have the animals, you know, like Henry and Hawk. It's Henry and Hawk in the studio.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: It's the engagement, though. If everything, if everything works with engagement. The cats are just like, this is everyone's problem. Everyone. There's someone out there trying to launch a famous cat or dog on live streaming. Can't do it.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: No, no. They just, they. They don't want to cooperate.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: And then.
Thank you for the gift.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: It's like the. Basically we have the circus on the, on the. On live streaming is no good.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: I don't know. It sounds great.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you know, there's a reason there's no animals in the circus anymore.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So we went to see the.
The very first showing of the new cool Ringling Brothers Circus.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Last summer. It was last summer.
[00:04:00] Speaker B: And the reason why I bring it up, this is directly related to live streaming.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yes. I know exactly what you're gonna.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. So. So as a British person, the Ringling Brothers Circus isn't as famous to us at all.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: To me, it's very personal. Like my childhood, there's a huge, like a lot of the reason I do what I do today, I was inspired by going to the circus and seeing the acts and the performing and the costume and everything. And Gunther Gable, Williams. Yes.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: But it wasn't just you. I think that was a lot of American kids.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Growing up.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: The greatest show on Earth.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: The great. The Greatest show on Earth. So what era was that through?
[00:04:39] Speaker A: Oh, goodness. It started. It started like the 1800s. Okay. And went all the way into like the 90s.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, the reason, another reason I thought of it because obviously they stopped doing it because they had animals in the circus. And obviously it then became apparent, like carting elephants and tigers around wasn't necessarily the best thing for the Animal.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Yeah. It's not in the animal's best interest.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: Yes.
But very recently, as in when earlier this year, they brought it back.
[00:05:11] Speaker A: They brought it back and they'd been working on it and we got invited, yeah.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Two of our close friends, dear, dear friends, really, really talented creative directors, Dan and Ross, who've worked on a multitude of projects across the world, like big, big stadium stuff with the creative directors for this show, which allowed us to go and see, like a preview show.
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Yeah. It was the first dress rehearsal they had ever done.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: And it was in their studios. Like it was in this big warehouse in the middle of nowhere out in Florida.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Very cool and very exciting.
So we watched the show.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: They had a dog, but it wasn't real. It was a robot dog.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Yeah. You can see this show now. It's been.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Touring now.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: It's really cool. It was the only animal in the show, was it. It was a robot dog.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: But they explained to us, and it was really apparent during the show that everything was about interaction in the show. So they had replaced, like the animal part of it with this more modern approach. Bearing in mind this is done in stadiums, essentially, or big tops. There were still elements in the show that they had put together which allowed the audience to like, call and respond and it would go into videos automatically go into videos. And then there would be songs in the show that had the audience singing in.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was very interactive. It was highly engaging.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Highly engaging.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Not just like, like analog and like, like organically there as a human being, but like digitally. It was very engaging.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: So nothing. Everything that we talk about with live streaming and engagement and how important it is and like how it drives it, like that is. It's not unique in that way. And like the people at the top of their game doing stuff in person, big real life events are also including that. Because it's a human need and it's part of being entertained is part of. Is being part of the show.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Do you remember we were talking about it? We said. We were like. We were making the connection. We're like, oh, my God. This is just like live streaming in the way that it. Everyone's different. You have to be there live at the moment to get that specific show. The people involved in the audience make part of the show. Like it creates an. It's an individual show that unless you're there, you're good. You don't. You don't experience it. So. And that's what we were saying. Like, that's what live streaming is. And like the whole like idea of like live entertainment and why it's so special is because you have to be there to experience what it is.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Or you miss it.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Talking about big shows, it's impossible to be recording on today, Tuesday 29th of October without mentioning Live Fest is happening right now.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: The warm up period is in effect.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Yes. Lifesty is in effect.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Yes, it is.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: There's some, there's kind of you starting to see all the advertisements particularly on Tick Tock Ramp up. They've opened up a Tick Tock.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: They have their own channel.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: Channel.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a, it's Tick tock live fest 2024. Yeah. And it's got like 24, 000 followers already.
And I saw a video of someone I met, Nola Kitten Nursery. Oh yeah, they have, they're talking about like how would you like to like have a boat of. Boat of diamonds. A boatload of diamonds.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: Well so they, the, the, the commercials are saying it's a split of 10 million diamonds first of all.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Yeah, so that's what we know so far. Yeah, it's cool. But I met, I met Nola Kitten Nursery at regionals at Live Fest last year. Very fun.
We were talking about what, what they do and then obviously she knew it was an animal lover because we started talking about possums and like and then I started, you know about Kentucky and possums and whatnot and you know, before the end of it we got an invite to go out there. So I'd love to go hang out with some animals. So maybe we should going on, take.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: A trip to go see taking her.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Up on the offer.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: You remember me from last year?
[00:09:15] Speaker A: I want to hang out with your animals right now.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Let's go.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: We will drop some Live Fest updates particularly as this gets going. But the, I think the one thing if you're a live streamer right now with Live Fest is knowing that it's the warm up period going to run until the 19th of November. So there's plenty of time. And the one thing every single person should be doing if you're a live streamer on Tick Tock Live is registering for the event. Yeah, that's it. Once you get, and you've registered for the event then you get a list of tasks that you can be doing.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: To be collecting points.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: So collect as many points as you can. Get a head start.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Get a head start.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Get a head start telling your audience.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: About it and go follow the Tick Tock Live Live Fest account.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Get on your marks and get set, go. No, not yet. Just get set.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Yeah, get warmed up.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah, warm it up. Get limber, do some stretches.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I definitely notice if I do exercise and I don't warm up.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: It'S, it's, it's not a good, it's not a good combination exercise without warming up.
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
As a kid, I used to be able to do that. Oh yeah, just boing.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Because when you're kids, you're superhuman.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: You are warmed up.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: You're already warmed up. You're running around all the time. You never sit still. That's why you're constantly in a warm up phase.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: As a kid, I remember I used to be able to bend my fingers back so my. I, you know when you interlock, if you imagine you interlock your fingers, could your elbows touch? No, my wrists could touch by, by pushing them so my fingers would bend backwards that far. Do there. That's it.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Oh, I see what you're saying.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Can you do your thumb down to your. Yeah, but I used to, I used to be able to. I can still do it. It's touching, but it used to be able to like completely flush.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: I can remember doing that hand thing.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: And thinking we used to be so embarrassed.
[00:11:00] Speaker B: Not be able to do this.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And then you get old and you don't move around as much.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Old. You like get past age 20 and it starts.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Guess what? In medical terms, you're geriatric.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: If you're over 30, you're geriatric, basically.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: All right, medically old.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So yeah.
But yeah, you just, you don't move around as much and you get stiff.
Your tendons don't move as much as they used do.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Let's do question of the day. We got a question of the day.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yes, we do a question of the day from. This is a cool. This is from a UK listener, one.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Of our first UK listeners as well.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Or first to write in at least. We see, we do see a couple floating around there. So they, they asked. They love doing boxes and chatting. So this is Tik Tok Live. They love doing boxes on and chatting like multi guesting but don't love being on screen right now.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Is it okay to be voice only? What do you think?
[00:11:57] Speaker A: Yes, first answers? Yes, it's okay.
Is it preferable? Ah, that's the question.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Right. Is it a violation?
[00:12:05] Speaker A: No, no.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Is it, is it worth. Is it going to get you in the fyp?
Possibly not.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Almost certainly not.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: Right. They. The algorithm is in the. Is looking for, looking for faces Faces and people.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: And that's because people are looking for.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: People are looking for people. People are looking for people on the app.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yes. But you know, there are, I mean, you can say there are the visually impaired people who just listen.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: And you, you can't knock that.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: So there is, there's a, there's a space for it. And I think if that is the case and we would recommend against it in almost all situations, at least that being the only way of streaming. Live streaming is so baked in with the visual. Yes. Otherwise it's kind of a radio show.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Right. So.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: But the engagement and the interaction would have to be so much higher to kind of counteract exactly what's going on. Yes.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: And I have seen, I've seen some boxes like multi shows on live streaming that very, very interactive. The host is so charismatic, draws my attention even though their face is there. The voice alone.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Keeps me watching. Yeah. But I stumbled across them like they weren't in my fyp. I don't know how. I think someone shared them with me.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: So that's the other way you get those viewers.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: Yes, it is, it is. Does happen.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Another part of this is that just being able to build followers and build community is going to take longer over voice only. The combination of voice plus live video, those two things are what builds connection between people faster.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. It's like, you know, if you're going to get customer service, you're more likely to have a video chat and trust that person as opposed to someone who calls you on, on the telephone.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Because you can see their face, you can see their expressions.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Yeah. You've got one less sense.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: Literally you do. You've cut off a whole sense of like, way of getting data to like figure out what's going on. Yeah.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: And we know it all works because obviously radio works really well and sometimes you don't need the face. That's the thing.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: It's a different medium.
[00:14:17] Speaker B: None of this is like definitively correct or different.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: If you're live streaming and you're making a choice, it may be that the choice to not have the camera on came from some other reason, rather than being intentional and thinking, I'm going to do it this way because of X, Y and Z, because there's an upside to it because you have a cover up on the screen. You can have text explaining the stream and things like that, which does the job of some calls to action and it does the job of explaining it, but it's like just keeping it at its core. What was the platform designed for. Not drifting too far out of those boundaries.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: I think if for someone who would like to maybe experiment and get their foot in the door of. Of like, who's not used to showing their face.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Maybe think about putting a filter on or, like an app filter, or you could just get a mask, a really cool mask that's like a part of, like, it could be part of your Persona.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: You're creating a whole new character now with that mask. I don't know. Pretty good.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: I think there's a great.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it would be pretty. Pretty cool. I know if I saw it. It's like a game show. You see, like, this. This announcer, this host with this mask. You're like, what is going on here? This is cool.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: I would try. I'm trying to remember the name. There's a French live streamer that won the globals last year.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: I remember you met him as well. Or them. And they have a black mask with.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: It's like very geometric.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Geometric shapes.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Yes. Very shiny, too. It's. Yeah. They never show their face ever. They're very anonymous.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: There is a place for that in the entertainment world for sure.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Yes. It's a niche in its own.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: Yeah. You're gonna do it. Think about it. Think the things that you need to do to replace that bit of human connection. And I think it's possible.
And like Tara says, if it is about nerves as well, finding ways to just get over the barrier of those nerves and practicing.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that got me really, really comfortable with, like, being in the public eye is doing cosplay.
It got me really comfortable, like, just public speaking as well. Just because I. I had a costume on, I was a character. But in that care I took on the Persona of that character with it, I, like, unlocked this, like, courage that I didn't know I had. And it was. It allowed it to come out. And, like, I found that by wearing a costume, it allowed me to be extra courageous.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Right. And that transitioned over into, like, ril as well.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Yeah. One of the reasons I look like I do when I'm on the totally awesome game show, that's part of. It's like a. It's a costume. It makes me. It. I'm a very nervous. I'm. I'm. I'm. I'm very shy. I'm a very shy person in real life, believe it or not. You know, she never shuts up. But, yeah, I'm very shy. So it is a way of getting past that. Those, like, jitters or that, like, that anxiety is just putting on that mask or putting on costume.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Giving. It's like an armor.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: It's like an armor and then you. You become comfortable with it because some of the things that you were scared about in. In the first instance aren't actually real or like the concern about messing up or doing it wrong or like looking silly. Like, those things you come to learn through repetition. It's like either those things don't ever come to fruition so there's no concern, or you do the thing and actually you don't look silly. You looked cool or funny or. No, there was no reaction at all. And like, it was. It was a. Nothing to be worried about.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Yes. It was just a figment of your imagination that you had to get over.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: Yeah. You hyped it up with yourself.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: So much of this is about the reps as well. Like doing the Reps. Yeah. Your 10,000 hours. Your 10,000 hours of a craft to get really good at it. It's not just like, if the 10,000.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: Hours thing basically says it's like, that's how long it takes you to master something. Is that. Is that what it is?
[00:18:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I love that.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:13] Speaker A: Isn't it like an Eastern philosophy thing?
[00:18:16] Speaker B: I'm not sure what the.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Watch it. Just be some, like, psych. Psychologist.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Where did it come from?
I was just. Oh, Malcolm Gladwell, the story of success.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:18:31] Speaker B: Were debunking the 10,000hour rule and taking a look at proven ways to practice, learn, and achieve mastery. Okay, so. Oh, that's a. I see.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: So they're debunking it.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: There's. There's different schools of thought. Obviously you don't just have to do 10,000 hours, but the principle of practice is well understood. And so spending time doing stuff, it isn't practicing doing it correctly. It's mostly practicing doing it wrong.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Right. I mean, that's how you learn to do it correctly is by making the mistakes and like, oh, God, I don't want to do that again.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: Same is true with carpentry or whatever.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: You do anything you do. Tying your shoes. Remember tying your shoes?
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Like, good God, that was such a nightmare. Trying to learn how to tie your shoe. I remember getting so frustrated.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: But then the minute you figured out that one little move that you did, that where it didn't fall out of your hand and, like, get loose, like, once you did that one time, you, like, okay, did it five more times, all of a sudden you're doing it over and over again now. It's like you do it without even thinking.
[00:19:29] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like a mechanical process.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: I don't even think about it. Like, I'm like, did I just. Did I even tie my shoes today?
[00:19:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And I hear like, pro, pro top live streamers talk about absorbing what numbers are on the screen, how many viewers in the room, how many likes are there? Like, what's the chat going? Like, what's happening. That all of that is information just going into their brain. They're not looking and going, oh, there's a hundred people in the room and I've got 23.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: They're just absorbing the information and processing it internally, like on, like autopilot. Because they've practiced over time. They didn't just start streaming and doing that. Like, they had to stream, do the thing they were doing and do that at the same time. And it was clumsy and it took time and it took practice. And that's the reps, like you said. And then eventually it's. They're processing it without even thinking about it. It's happening.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Right. And it's different to other skills where, like video making, where you can. You could spend a whole day video editing and making, and you put them out and then you're testing and you're kind of getting. You have the experience of making. And then there's lots of ways of testing that can last weeks.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Right. You make it, you distribute it.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: And then you get the feedback over.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Time versus live, where the only way you can practice being live is being.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Live is being live. And you get. And you get instant feedback right from it.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: So, like, the time live is the time putting those repetition hours in. And any prep work that you do is even outside of that.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Yeah. It's kind of cool, though, because if you think about it, the. The former, you're doing it on your own, you're basically getting better doing this thing by yourself, but then the latter, like, doing it live with a community. You're growing together with that community. Like, they're watching you grow through it. And it's like that in itself brings you closer together as a community. So it's really cool.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: It's less of a lonely pursuit. There's a lot of, like, skills or crafts where it's quite a lonely pursuit.
So. Yeah, I hadn't really thought about that before. It's quite fun. You get to do it with a group of people.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And I, I'm a, I'm a group learner. Like, I love when we have like corporate events where they. It's like a learning day and you're in groups and it's like, okay, here's. Let's. We're all gonna. It's like I'm, I love doing, learning like that. It's just, it makes it more fun.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: It's not even, it's not even the audience community. It's also the community of other live streamers who are out there doing it as well. So it's like, to use your analogy, it's the corporate event, but then also after that, then you go out to the, the hotel that all the you're all staying in that you all then kind of hang out as the people that put on the corporate event. Yeah, those are all the streamers.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: Like, let's meet at the bar.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So it does seem like live streaming is in parallel with what has gone before in terms of entertainment. Like, the further you go back and you look back in history, people were live, entertaining, I think almost exclusive entertainment.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Entertainment over the course of time has done that.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Not just live streaming.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm, I'm starting to feel that the, the idea of like live. Oh, it's new. It's the new thing. It's like, it's not social media. We all have to change the way that we're thinking. This is kind of like the conversations that happening.
Like I'm wondering if it's much more of a core like tenant of being a human and doing things live is the way that it was always done, designed. And it's only just recently and by recently, like in the last hundred years, where suddenly stuff was recorded and there was this delay between creation and consumption.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: Yeah, there was that. Exactly. It is almost like we were talking about this over coffee and it was, it was kind of blowing my mind thinking about it and how we're like, yeah, well, you know, it's like it's tied to attention span because we can talk about that in a minute. But just how, how we are as humans, like over the course of time.
[00:23:35] Speaker B: We'Re talking like, well, let's look up some dates.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, let's go back in time.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Okay. So if we were to look up. Let's, let's do this. Let's. Let's draw a timeline which covers across the bottom is time passing. And then we're going to look at the. Whether the time between creation and consumption, like how wide I produce something.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: I produce a content of whatever form and then it gets consumed by a person observing it.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: So if you go Back like, as, as human humans started to exist. Like, there's, you know, like tribal drumming and dance. Like that is ancient, medieval kind of performance.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Stuff. And it's live.
It's just happening live. And that carries on through. I just pulled up a timeline here, Tara.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: And if you're not there, if you slept in that, that if you went to bed early that night, you didn't get to partake, you didn't get to know what was going on.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: Missed out, like, you get all the way through, like, 5th century Greek theater. It's like that was all life.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: Right.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: What was that? I love that. I, I for. Oh, God, the masks. It's tragedy and comedy. Isn't that where that came from?
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where that, that mask come. I'm not quite sure how it ties together, but, yeah, that's connected. And then you come, like Shakespeare's time, like 1500, 1600s, still all live, all interaction as well. All of this time, the gap between creation and consumption is immediate.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: All of this time.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Yes, it is.
[00:25:21] Speaker B: And then it's only when you get into, like, 1920s, when they start early radio broadcasts. So that was all still live.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Yeah, it was definitely after the Industrial Revolution when technology, like, started.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And they were doing plays which were once live on, which was. Well, it's still happening, but it was.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: On a stage in front of an audience.
[00:25:42] Speaker B: Now it was brought into the home.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: But it's still live.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: And that was the first time they brought entertainment into the home.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: I know. Well, it was. And it was the first time a lot of people were able to consume it at all, like, for the first time ever, because some of those people would never have been able to get to. They would never be exposed to that entertainment ever. They. And by the way, I think the ancient Greeks had the masks because the amphitheaters, from the distance, like to see the faces, the expressions. I think, I think that's why they did that.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: If my memory serves.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: Correct. So you could perform to a larger, or you could engage a larger audience with your limited tools, which was like no big screens or any way to project your voice.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: You had to exaggerate your facial features. And so the best way for that was like, a mask. They would put a mask on and change their masks.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: That's wild.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
But, yeah, and then the TVs.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: So TV comes along age. So it's around here, like the 1940s, 50s, where golden age of TV, like TV was also done live, if you remember. Like, right at the beginning. And then things like soap operas, they started to be recorded and then put out the same week. So there's like a delay.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: There was a. It wasn't live anymore, but the delay. It was like a. It was like, okay, now we're gonna. It's gonna be produced a little bit better because we've. We've invented these ways of this technology and these ways of making it look better when we, like, present it.
[00:27:10] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: So we're gonna delay it a little bit and then we're gonna present it.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Televised events still, things are going on live. Right. But the eyes and the attention are starting to go to these things that are recorded. And the gap between creation and consumption is getting wider.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it's more convenient for people to. To watch them from the convenience of their own homes as opposed to going out and going to the actual live event.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah. And at this point, production quality, you need a bit of time to do to make it look better.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: There was no instant overlay effect that we have on our phone that gives us the effect that would have taken them six weeks to, like, do back then.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Speaking of effects, like, think about the wizard of Oz when they made it Technicolor. Like, they painted all those little things to make it colored.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: So that's the cinema. Like, the cinema is the movie. Cinema is the next step in terms of, like, widening the gap. The same with music. Music as well. It goes from. It was live in a room, and then you get to record it, and then you take six months or a year to make an album and put it out. The gap between the two, the same with a movie. It. Like the. This. The detachment from live entertainment, if that's what we consumed as humans, basically all our existence suddenly across. What is this, like, a couple of hundred years? Suddenly now we're making things and we're trying to attach meaning to stuff that was made in advance.
[00:28:32] Speaker A: The benefit of it, though, I think. Yes. And the benefit of this is that it's getting out to a wider amount. It's like. It's mass, like, consumption now as opposed to, like, live could only be delivered to whoever was able to fit in that physical space.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the. That's a huge.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: And it's a huge benefit for, like, now all of a sudden, people who would not, like we said earlier, who would never be exposed to any kind of this type of entertainment, are now getting exposed to it, Right?
[00:29:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: So that's a huge. Like, it's huge.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And. But there's Only so many movies are made or TV shows or albums that get made. So there's only so many actors or movies or albums or musicians that can become known.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Like there's only a top of.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. That it could only come from that pool.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: And then we started to see it like the, the time start to shorten again. Like television shows like the, the, the reality shows start to come around which and are clearly not live.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Right. Because it's less production. It's like being filmed like from a person who has the camera on their shoulder. It's being filmed like in action. You're following the story, following the story. It's like, quick edit, quick edit. Cut this out, cut this out. Add the sound here. Boom, it's ready, let's air it.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: And part of this is like, so if the time is coming down, like the part of live is what's coming next. So when you go to a movie, you're not like, well, anything could happen at the end.
[00:30:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: You know, it's already decided. You just got to get through it. Whereas if you're watching Big Brother, like, so that it's open ended, you might be watching a feed from yesterday, let's say, or earlier in the day. So it's not live. But you, you still have this like I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow so I need to check in. It's like a delayed live, essentially.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: Like I said, the, it's an open ended type of scenario. Whereas like a movie, a, like a cinematic movie, you know, there's like a beginning, a middle and an end. Whereas this is like it's ongoing. You don't know. It's like, oh, and what happens next? Cliffhanger Central.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: So reality TV is like, starts in the early 2000s year, 2000, late 90s, Survivor, Big Brother. Like they're getting recorded much closer to their air dates.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Remember I remember MTV's the Real World. That was the first reality show.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: That I remember.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:58] Speaker A: And I remember watching it live on live tv, which is not really live as we're talking about right now.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Then so YouTube shows up 2005 and like the beginning of influence, the rise of influences.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: The Internet entertainment creators begin producing content.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: That could be posted in within like hours or days of recording.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: And it shortens that timeline significantly.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Oh my God. That just unlocked a memory of when I used to post things and it would take forever to like when I used to upload things to YouTube. It Take forever to process.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: Sometimes it would take a whole 24 hours to process. And I was like, because of my Internet connection or whatever. But I. That just. And now it's like instant things don't take that long at all.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: I think it might have been your Internet connection, but also that.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: But it was.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: Interface was a bit like clunky as well. I, I remember that uploading videos and it would fail. It would like take three hours and I would come back to it and it says upload failed.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And then you're like, oh God, start all over again.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: If you upload something to YouTube now, like, it always works. There's like no problem.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Well, they've worked the kinks out over the years.
[00:32:05] Speaker B: Yeah, over the 20 decades. Twenty years, yeah. Like it takes time to do these things.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: It takes time to build.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: I sometimes think that with, with Tick Tock Live, people remembering like it's brand new. It's like so baby years old.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: Such a baby.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: And if you compare it to something like YouTube, it's like in. It feels like the same thing, but it's not. They're doing a lot of. Because of the liveness. Technically it's different.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: So you're working out different problems. Like, not to get sidetracked, but it's like, how do you moderate at this scale? It's not that it's being done badly, it's like it's never been done at that scale. So they're figuring out how to do it.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Because also, even though like other live platform, other platforms that are live streaming as well aren't doing it distribute like the distribution of those live streams from Tick Tock Live is like so much wider.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: Than the other ones because they're in like a closed network. Whereas like, and, or like with Tick Tock's like as many like, hey, come, come, come into this live. Come into this live. Come in here. Hey, you. You've never seen this before. Come here, come look at this.
Or you over there.
Yeah.
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Let's keep drawing this graph because this is fun. So it's gone from like most of human history, like in like the year minus 10,000, right up until till like.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: So we're trending with the, I guess the delta of the production to consumption, it's starting to widen. It's like continuously getting bigger.
[00:33:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: As we're, as we're speaking right now, where we are in the timeline.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: No, it's coming down now because we're on short form.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: You're right now we're coming.
[00:33:45] Speaker B: Yeah, Was. Yeah. But it's only very recent that it Went up and it's coming back down. So if we, you get to short form content and you know, particularly when it was starting out, the advice is like, you should post three, four times a day. It's like that is essentially live, like slices through the day. It's being made and being put out in within a couple of hours. And so it then walks into the room. Live streaming, which was obviously it's been around all of these things. It's been around but it starts to become a predominant form of where the eyes go.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: This really, this graph is like where the eyes have gone.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: The eyes have gone from. It's all going to theater to live things to suddenly the eyes going to TV and then to movies. The movies just demanded, oh my God.
[00:34:34] Speaker A: So many eyes went to the movie screens.
[00:34:36] Speaker B: So you're not going to the live performance, you're going to this thing that was pre release recorded. And then it gets closer and closer in time. YouTube comes along, people's eyes are on YouTube.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: And then it, you know, it gets on social media and now we're talking about it coming to live, which is essentially just immediate.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: It is.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: There's no time between creation, consumption.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: No. And it's like, oh my God, we've just come full circle, full circle. Oh. And honestly, it's not a bell curve after all. Like it's more like a sharp, like up and then a sharp decline and it's a blip in the history of time. So it's like it kind of makes me feel like that's really unnatural as humans.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Because the piece.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: To get that to, to receive your entertainment in that way, it seems like it's not natural, but I mean, no, it's, it's.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm not sure if it's not what we're talking is natural or not.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: But we have to finish your thought.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: Your original thought of like the only reason the timeline spread apart between creation to consumption was that was how you were able to hit lots of people.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: People.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: Previously live was limited to the people you could shout to.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Then the world, you could shout to the whole world. But you had to record it, it had to go out that way, broadly speaking. And now we're back to a point where you can go live, but you can speak to the whole world immediately in real time. Yeah.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Because that was the thing about the mass producer produced pre recorded stuff was that you were not engaging in it like we were before with live entertainment.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: I mean even like all live, like Broadway shows, everything's like you Engage. Because you're clapping, you're hooting, you're hollering, you're like, yeah, you're throwing tomatoes. You're doing whatever. Like, you're part. You're throwing toast. If you're going to a Rocky Horror Picture show, like, you're engaging it, that's not live anyway. But you make it live as the audience, like, they're like, this isn't live, but we're going to make it live.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a fun. That's a. That's a whole study.
[00:36:27] Speaker A: That's an anomaly. That's anomaly right there. Yeah.
[00:36:29] Speaker B: So but even, even the movie rate, like the most popular movie rating website, Rotten Tomatoes, it's like recognizing that is a place for people to throw Rotten Tomatoes at the movies.
Like on the Internet.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: So it's mirroring the same thing, the same desire to do that.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: It's kind of. It, like, I feel. Wow. Like I almost feel like I'm going to explode right now with this, like, realization. It's like, don't explode. It's like, you know, brain explosion.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's something very powerful about live and it's like understanding how to harness it and how it connects with, like, how humans. Like.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Because now we're. Now we're. Now we're consuming it live and we're back to where we were in the beginning. What we were lacking from the produce stuff and pre recorded is we're back to getting that like instant, like in real time engagement. Yeah, the back and forth.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, and where the eyes are. This is where the eyes are going. And there's no doubt about it, the eyes are going this way, the money is going this way. And the bit that's new and different is that the viewers are now paying for the entertainment directly.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: Directly to the entertainer.
[00:37:40] Speaker B: I like what is, you know, it's back to, like, if I don't know how. I don't know how do they pay for their tickets in ancient Greece and things like that? I'm sure there's a ticketing system, but, like, it's tipping right there.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: A golden coin for entry, please.
[00:37:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
Not that we want to recreate that. I imagine there was quite a lot of stab.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Now there's coins, but, you know, it's like digital coins.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Probably wasn't a very safe time to be a performer back then.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: No.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: All right, Tara. Well, all right, let's. Let's catch up again real soon.
[00:38:13] Speaker A: This is fun. Let's do it. This was great. I love, I love history to discover your future, you must observe your past.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Observe your past. Yes. Yes. I think thought about in like, historic, like history times or politics and things like that. I think this is really interesting for entertainment as well to like, break it down in that way because ultimately everything that we talk about, which is like better performance, making it a career, all of those things really, it comes down to the human connection.
[00:38:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it really does.
[00:38:46] Speaker B: And understanding what that human connection is the big part of the puzzle.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Yep. And if. Yeah.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: The.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Why.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Why is someone here?
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, that's why we have this podcast.
[00:38:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: Honestly, it's to discover these things. So let's do that.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: All right. Until next time, discovering.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: If you have any questions, we have a email web address. You can. You can send it to us.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it's podcast. Blueshift. Creative.com.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: So come find us.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Look forward to hearing from you.
[00:39:15] Speaker B: Bye Bye, everyone.
