Streaming On The Rise: Pollstar Charts Livestreams

Chart Topper:
John Shearer / Getty Images / Scotty McCreery – Chart Topper:
Scotty McCreery, performing at Nashville’s Ryman in March, topped Pollstar’s new Livestream Chart in May.

As the concert industry works to adapt to its new reality, it has been necessary to modify how Pollstar chronicles box office success, with occasions to gather for live events rare if existent at all. Faced with the lack of traditional box office specifics – namely, the number of tickets sold for a live show in a venue and the revenues produced – we have had to look for other options to portray what’s happening in live entertainment.

Presently, it’s the streaming of live performing that is most available for music fans hungry to stay connected to their favorite artists. Even though event producers are experimenting with drive-in theaters and social distancing in severely reduced capacity environments, artists’ livestreams have been the primary source for sharing creative product since the shutdown of live shows earlier this year.

Thus, in our May 18 issue, Pollstar unveiled its Livestream Chart, a new feature presenting a weekly breakdown of the top 50 streams, ranked by the number of views, to highlight that artistic creativity in the medium. Each week the chart analyzes streamed musical performances that occur from Tuesday through the following Monday of the week that precedes the issue date of the publication. For example, this issue, dated June 15, features streams that occurred during the seven-day period from June 2-8.

The chart is populated only with the streams of live events, so we avoid any recordings of archived or vintage performances from the past. Also, we are only tracking musical performances and taking final tallies two days after livestreams.

Along with the name of the artist(s), we identify the event name if available, followed by the performance date. Since the chart is ranked by views, that column is highlighted. The viewership count is based on publicly available data from social platforms that currently include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Circle Plus and Fans.com. We also list the number of shares when available. In the future, we may include monetization as data becomes more available.
The launch of the chart in the issue dated May 18 featured streams through the week ending May 11. The first top-ranked stream was a May 5 event titled “Take Five Together for St. Jude” a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as part of #GivingTuesdayNow. Along with celebrity participants, the event featured a live performance by country artist Scotty McCreery and logged 1.6 million views on Facebook.

Brett Eldredge topped the second chart, in the issue dated May 25 with 660,000 streams with his May 13 performance as part of the iHeartRadio Living Room Series, which pays homage to essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic along with a charity tie-in – for this performance, the Red Cross.
June’s first issue made it three weeks in a row with a country singer atop the chart, as Lee Greenwood landed at No. 1 based on 635,000 views of his Memorial Day performance. The Grammy-winning artist performed material from his long career including his signature song, the patriotic hit “God Bless the U.S.A.”.
The June 8 issue saw DJ David Guetta take top honors with more than 7.7 million views of his May 30 “United at Home” performance, which benefited various organizations around the world, while this week Norah Jones claimed No. 1 with a June 4 show, the latest in the streaming series she broadcasts Thursdays via her Facebook page.
 
To report livestreamed concert performances, email [email protected].