Flymachine raises $21 million to develop a platform for virtual concerts in a post-pandemic world
Flymachine raises $21 million to develop a platform for virtual concerts in a post-pandemic world
As concerts and live events return to the physical world on a national scale, many in the technology industry have wondered whether some of the pandemic-era opportunities for virtualizing these events have been lost for the foreseeable future.
Flymachine, based in San Francisco, is on a mission to discover the digital music industry's holy grail: a way to capture some of the magic of live concerts and performances in a livestreamed setting. The startup is hoping that pandemic-era consumer habits surrounding video chat socialization, combined with an industry in desperate need of digital diversification, will help bring their brand of virtual concerts into the lives of music fans.
Flymachine's ambitions are not cheap; according to TechCrunch, the startup has raised $21 million in investor funding to fund its plans. Greycroft Partners and SignalFire led the financing, which also included participation from Primary Venture Partners, Contour Venture Partners, Red Sea Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank.
The virtual concert industry did not experience the lockdown that some had hoped for. Spotify conducted research into virtual events. Meanwhile, startups such as Wave have raised significant amounts of venture capital to transform real performers into digital avatars in order to facilitate the creation of more digital-native concerts. And, while some smaller acts embraced live shows over Zoom or partnered with startups like Oda to offer live concert subscriptions, larger acts had few mainstream hits.
The Reason Behind the Startup
The startup is not attempting to convert in-person attendees of a show into virtual participants, but rather to create an appealing experience for those who would otherwise have to miss the show. Whether those virtual attendees reside too far from a venue, are unable to secure a babysitter for the evening, or are simply over the mosh pit scene, Flymachine is hoping there are enough potential attendees on the fence to sustain the startup as it attempts to blur the lines between "a night in and a night out," CEO Andrew Dreskin says.
The startup's strategy is to establish partnerships with well-known concert venues across the United States — including New York City's Bowery Ballroom, San Francisco's Bimbo's 365 Club, Seattle's The Crocodile, Nashville's Marathon Music Works, and Los Angeles' Teragram Ballroom — and to livestream select shows from those venues to at-home audiences. Dreskin founded Ticketfly (which was acquired by Pandora), and co-founder Rick Farman co-founded Superfly, which produces the Bonnaroo and Outside Lands music festivals.
In terms of actual experience — and I had the opportunity to attend one of the shows (pictured above) prior to writing this — Flymachine has done their best to recreate the sensation of shouting over the music to communicate with nearby friends. In Flymachine's world, this entails attending the show in a "private room" alongside other friends who are livestreaming from their homes via video chat bubbles. It's well-executed and doesn't detract too much from the concert itself, but you can adjust the volume of your friends and the music as necessary.
Flymachine's platform launch earlier this year, at a time when many Americans have been vaccinated and many concertgoers are preparing to resume normalcy, may have been viewed as a bit late, but the founding team sees a long-term opportunity that COVID has highlighted.
“We weren't in a hurry to get the product out the door while people remained cooped up in their homes because we knew this would become ingrained in the fabric of society in the future,” Dreskin tells TechCrunch.
