Live Streaming Success: A Client Success Story

Becoming the Netflix of concerts sounds like a lofty goal, but with a solid digital strategy that includes WordPress and partnering up with WebDevStudios and Pagely, there’s no doubt it can be reached. Who would set their sights on such a dream? Meet mySongbird, the ultimate destination for viewing live streaming musical performances, which not only entertains music lovers but also brings an additional revenue stream to musicians.

mySongbird recently came to WebDevStudios (WDS) for a brand new website to kick off the launch of their startup company. Once our business development team had a clear understanding of the site’s requirements, that’s when WDS turned to Pagely for hosting.

“With this particular project, we knew that the live streaming aspect would necessitate a host that could meet and support the requirements for heavy traffic without disrupting quality of service. That’s when we approached Pagely,” explains WDS CEO and Co-Founder, Brad Williams.

Phase 1: Bracket Style Competition

Overall, the website project was planned in two phases. First, there was a bracket-style voting competition that mySongbird utilized as a part of their marketing strategy. This initiative helped to build the new brand’s presence, garner an audience by tapping into the fanbase of the musical acts participating in the competition, as well as assist those musicians with earning an income, which was well-appreciated during a pandemic when live music venues were being shut down. This revenue came in when fans backed their bands by paying $1 per vote for their favorite performers. WDS relied on WooCommerce as the eCommerce solution.

“While we built the backend functionality of the bracket system ourselves, we leveraged the power of WooCommerce to make it easy for fans to vote and mySongbird to manage the competition,” reports Christine Dixon, the WDS project manager in charge of overseeing the mySongbird launch.

“The brackets worked great,” says mySongbird EP Creative Director, Robert Angone. “I like the way the head-to-head modeling was displayed.”

Phase 2: Live Streaming

The next phase of the project was especially exciting—a live streaming concert featuring Grammy-nominated multi-platinum artist, Billy Gilman, an event that took place on October 9, 2020. Aside from the live streaming performance itself, WebDevStudios also had to build the functionality for signing up for a mySongbird subscription service and video on demand, which serves as an opportunity for music fans to watch live stream entertainment after initially being aired live.

WordPress acts as the framework for mySongbird’s website, and while WooCommerce is used to provide all eCommerce aspects of the site, Bulldog Digital Media provides the streaming service itself. All WDS had to do was embed a code, and voila! Audience members could easily log into mySongbird and watch Billy Gilman perform his country music hits.

“The show looked fantastic!” exclaims Robert. “For the future, there are some tweaks we want to make, but overall the way Billy performed and the presentation of the solution was absolutely perfect for the first time.”

mySongbird VP and & GM, Meghan Thornton, agrees, adding that she appreciated the client service WDS offered on the day of the live streaming show. “We had a Slack channel and had key people on that, so there wasn’t a ton of back and forth. It was nice to have that in place to make communication between teams easier. For example, we had a problem with window width and Jeffrey [de Wit, Lead Engineer] fixed it on the spot.”

“One of our biggest challenges with mySongbird was ensuring we provided our entertainment artists and their fans a solid, dependable platform that not only offered secured payment gateways but that could also handle an onslaught of website traffic without disruption,” says Angie Commorato, A&G Marketing Founder, who brought mySongbird to WebDevStudios initially. “I trusted Brad and the team at WebDevStudios to make the right recommendations for the solution, which ended up being Pagely for hosting. The team at Pagely knocked it out of the ballpark. Not only did they give us the reliability and performance we needed for the project, but their service was impressive, too, by being accessible, answering all of our questions, and assuring us that everything would go smoothly. It did!”

Now, mySongbird is set up for success. With all the right solutions set in place and the experience of their first live streaming event behind them, there’s no limit to the musical milestones mySongbird is destined to achieve. There is no expectation of any hitches in their future bracket competitions or live stream events.