This summer, Youtube expands its music services by offering live streams from major festivals all over Europe. This year the popular Dutch festival Lowlands will be streamed as well, covering bands like ‘Go back to the Zoo’, ‘ Bloc Party’ and ‘ The Black Keys’. 

Google elaborated on the idea on their European Public Policy Blog, explaining how music is a key component to YouTube’s success and how everyone should be able to experience festivals and musicians, even in times of economic crisis. 

It seems YouTube’s festival project is well received by the public; the Lollapalooza festival scored an average of 44 minutes by viewers and the Tomorrowland festival had over 600.000 comments posted on the channel. 

Lowlands director Eric van Eerdenburg is happy about the live streams of his festival. ‘Lowlands is in the same weekend as seven other festivals, we all fight over the same artists. Lowlands being streamed live is good for my competitive position’, he says.

Read more on the topic of live streaming on Future of Copyright:

• Live streams of sport broadcasts facilitate copyright infringement
• Buma/Stemra: "Radio linking sites must negotiate licenses"

Sources: Google Policy Europe Blog, Parool.nl

Written by: Nathalie Falot