Since the beginning of social distancing, live streaming has been the one major performance opportunity available to artists. We can easily spend all day everyday now tuning in to watch artists of all types. As a result, our industry has simultaneously become flooded with live streaming and confronted with many new challenges.

For example, how do you compete for people's attention with so many streams happening? How do you determine the proper price for virtual tickets when your patrons are used to viewing content for free? What type of artist fee should you offer an artist for a virtual concert? Should you use Facebook, YouTube, and/or Instagram to stream the event or are there better platforms out there? How do you make a unique experience for your patrons when you no longer have the ambience of your venue? If you are an artist, how do you make a unique experience for your fans who may be watching your show on a small phone? Lastly, what will all of this look like when live music can finally resume in person?

These questions and many more are fundamentally changing how live music is presented and received. While we won’t have time to address everything on today’s webinar, our goal is to share new ideas that address some of these basic challenges.

Maria Schneider is a 5x Grammy winning conductor and composer and she has worked with everyone from David Bowie to Dawn Upshaw. In 2019 the National Endowment for the Arts bestowed on Schneider the nation's highest honor in jazz, naming her an NEA Jazz Master. Recently, the National Recording Registry inducted her Grammy winning album Concert in the Garden into the registry and she was also given the distinction of being elected into the 2020 American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Today we are featuring a new organization called NITO, which stands for the National Independent Talent Organization. In their own words “NITO is a non-profit group initially formed by like-minded independent talent agencies for the purpose of promoting the welfare and prosperity of its members and their represented artists, as well as for the indirect benefit of those associated with them.

Today we are featuring a new company on Speaking of the Arts called Virtual Concert Hall. They have created a unique product that aims to solve a major problem for both artists and venues right now.

Today’s episode is about a new coalition recently formed to help support agencies during the pandemic. The coalition is called PAMAC, which stands for the Performing Arts Managers and Agents Coalition.

This is a group of more than 150 artist managers, booking agents and independent producers in the performing arts industry, with support from 16 arts service organizations, including Americans for the Arts and the League of American Orchestras.

Today we pick up on our Artists in Quarantine mini series and feature the pianist, composer, and activist Fred Hersch.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Speaking of the Arts. My guest today is Kristy Edmunds. Kristy currently serves as the Executive and Artistic Director for UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.

Welcome to Speaking of the Arts. Today’s guest is Jay Sweet.
Jay is the Executive Producer of The Newport Folk Festival, The Newport Jazz Festival and Newport Festivals Foundation, a 501(c)(3) which expands the impact of its Festivals through music education initiatives throughout the United States. During his tenure, the Newport Folk Festival has won five Pollstar awards for Music Festival Of The Year; and America's original music festivals have regained their stature as premier happenings.

Welcome to a special episode of Speaking of the Arts. Today’s episode will feature the audio from a live panel discussion we recently hosted via Zoom. The topic was on the Future of Performing Arts and our guest speakers explored different scenarios for how to present music going forward.

Today we are featuring the award winning pianist and composer, Emmet Cohen.

The National YoungArts Foundation recently featured Emmet for his weekly live stream concert series called Live from Emmets place. Emmet does this with his trio every Monday night at 7:30PM Eastern and you can tune in and watch via Emmet’s facebook page.

Speaking of the Arts welcomes NEA Jazz Master Delfeayo Marsalis and Epstein & Company's own Marie Le Claire. In this episode, we talk to Delfeayo to hear more about his new album JAZZ PARTY and what he has been up to during quarantine.

Today is the first episode of a new mini series I will be doing where we will be featuring some of our artists during this time of quarantine. My first guest is Kat Edmonson.

Hello everyone and welcome to Speaking of the Arts. I hope you are staying safe and healthy right now as we enter the second half of April 2020. This is a tough time to be in the arts and there is a lot of uncertainty as to when live music will be allowed to function again. I hope to offer something of value for all of the musicians and presenters listening who are wondering what opportunities may be available to them right now.

Speaking of the Arts welcomes Todd Walker. Todd recently launched a new agency called Outer/Most. They represent a ton of great artists including Flor de Toloache, Anoushka Shankar, Madison McFerrin, and many more.

Speaking of the Arts welcomes Joe O'Neil! Joe currently works for the music software company Prism, a unique platform for promoters and talent buyers.

Fred Taylor was one of the most respected and genuine people I've ever worked with in the music industry. He passed away at the age of 90 on Saturday after dedicating his life to promoting the artists he worked with. Here we pay tribute to Fred and we will miss him.

Welcome to Episode 46 of Speaking of the Arts! Today we feature Jeff Kane from Live Nation/Ticketmaster.

Brian T. O'Neill leads the acclaimed dual-ensemble, Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica and has performed at prestigious venues in the US including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Montreal Jazz Festival. In addition to being a busy independent musician, Brian is also a product designer and founder of the consultancy, Designing for Analytics, which helps enterprise companies turn data into indispensable information products and services.

Speaking of the Arts goes under the hood and discusses Epstein & Company's Unique Process for working with artists!

Brian Camelio founded ArtistShare in 2001. The platform is now recognized as the Internets first fan-funding platform. ArtistShare enables fans to not only fund their favorite artist’s projects, but to truly become participants in the creative process.