Bands Adapting to Live Shows on the Internet

2020 has been exceptionally rough on the music scene. Every single tour has either been postponed or canceled since April or so, even ones announced several months in advance. Tours aren’t cheap to organize either and this put so many bands in substantial debt in preparation for these expeditions. As such, they need to recoup their losses somehow. Thankfully, there’s an answer and it still lets them perform: live streams.

Back in March, Hardcore band Code Orange celebrated the release of their new album Underneath by performing a live set on Twitch in a venue. Doing this was unprecedented, as this was the early part of the quarantine. In the process, the stream had 13,000 concurrent viewers, an incredible number for the circumstances. This caught the attention of a lot of bands, and they took to follow suit.

Ever since then a good number of bands have gotten out of their comfort zone and had makeshift concerts in their living quarters. Some were able to all be in the same room, while others performed in unison virtually. Now that restrictions are easing up, larger-scale bands are looking to play their album release shows at venues much like Code Orange were able to do. Two big ones planned are Dance Gavin Dance and Slaves.

Dance Gavin Dance digitally released their new album, Afterburner, on April 23rd at the behest of waiting for a physical release to garner better album sales. The physical release, at long last, is July 10th, and to celebrate it they are playing an album release show of their own on July 17th.

Slaves, who have been sitting on their album To Better Days for a while too, are doing the same on August 5th. These should prove to be exciting shows, as fans haven’t had a chance to see the bands live for essentially the entire year. It’s likely we’ll see more of these to close out the year before we eventually get to see our favorite bands at venues again.