Our man for managing brilliant live concert images is Peter Deckers, aka Decky or Deckselse Decksters. Every year, he summarises the highlights of our live-broadcasts. But his findings are so spectacular that we just have to share them with you! Get ready!
“When the last lights of the decade soon inevitably go out in the hall and 2019 shuffles to the door in its winter socks, that’s when we’re traditionally here again with our big AB-TV year-in-review. The 10th! As it is now 10 years since that I swapped the desk of Press Officer here for that of Content Manager and slowly but surely threw myself into AB-TV. In 2009, our video platform still ran entirely on an own server and we still filmed in SD quality with a potato (YouTube slang). Putting concert clips on YouTube (where the maximum upload time was only 10 minutes, in 480p resolution) was still impossible as far as rights were concerned and yet we still achieved several thousand views on a video sometimes. Or an annual total of 78,000 views. Last year we clocked off at almost 7 million. You can figure out for yourself which multiplication factor is involved there.
Just as in the two previous years, we had viewers from every country in the world again this year and we Belgians (with 15,9%) took over the ranking pole position from the Americans (11,1%), followed by our neighbours in France (8,9%), Germany (6,8%), UK (4,7%), The Netherlands (4,3%), and then Brazil, Poland & Spain (with approximately 2,5% each).
But even in forgotten corners of the world there is sometimes someone watching a ‘Live at AB’. So there was someone in Svalbard and Jan Mayen (Google it!) who watched a Daniël Norgren concert for an hour or so. They also like Cigarettes after Sex in Nepal! Our very own Tamino wins online hearts in Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Tunisia and especially Turkey (where he already had 40,000 girls dreaming of an Indigo Night).
The man may then have many female hearts beating faster, but it is mainly males who catch a concert online: 73% men versus 27% women (who also like to ‘hang around’ afterwards sometimes, just like at an offline concert). The average viewing duration measured no less than 16 minutes and 55 seconds this year, extremely long by internet norms. By the way, more than half (51%) of the viewers are under the age of 34, 26% are between 35 and 44, and 20% are aged +45.
As far as live streaming is concerned, we made the complete transition from YouTube live to Facebook Live and this has increased our reach incredibly. Video views are taking place on Facebook more and more. Also new was the fact that we entered into collaborations with other European venues & media partners - via crossposting for various streams, we were able to give new Belgian talent a helping hand outside our borders.
Top 10 most viewed concerts on ABtv in 2019:
- Ry X & The Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra (668K)
- Vulfpeck (612k)
- Cigarettes after Sex (430k)
- Tenacious D (260k)
- Tamino (185k)
- Xavier Rudd (180k)
- Zwangere Guy (173k)
- Fat Freddy's Drop (154k)
- All Them Witches (146k)
- Amenra (115k)
Top 10 livestreams:
- The Streets (54k)
- Brihang (38k)
- STAKE (37k)
- The Van Jets (25k)
- Arid (24,3K)
- Die Antwoord (24k)
- Taxiwars (22,4k)
- Trixie Whitley (20,7k)
- Portland (18,3k)
- Black Box Revelation (16,6k)
