This year, Coachella and YouTube have planned to extend their live streaming coverage into the second weekend of the festival. Both weekend’s will live stream the same acts, however, the second weekend will include mini-documentaries of international music acts. This will be the first time YouTube will undertake this endeavor and will be a major case study on whether live streaming the same event twice can have the same amount of viewership.
YouTube’s decision to live stream the second weekend of Coachella was mainly spawned from the success of Beyoncé’s Coachella performance. Her live stream ended up receiving 41 million views and was viewed 232 countries and territories. Beyoncé will also soon be releasing footage of the performance as a part of a film showing the entire construction of her set.
The big question that remains is: will YouTube be able to recreate the success of Beyoncé’s live stream? The majority of the acts and special mini-film will most likely not be able to go toe to toe with Beyoncé. However, K-pop band, BLACKPINK, is a little bit of a wild card due to their international presence. Both weekend live streams will capture a good insight as to how Asia-Pacific online viewership works during a West coast time-zoned event.
In addition to the normal music sets, YouTube is also planned to live stream Kanye West’s, “Easter Sunday Service.” It will be the first live streamed music sermon by a major music artist.
The live stream will kick off on YouTube (www.youtube.com/coachella) this Friday at 7 pm ET. Both weekend live streams will be conducted from Friday – Sunday and will have three available channels to watch from. You can view the trailer at: