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32-channel
consoles that give a wide range of possibilities for recording audio and digital
video.
“It’s
almost like pulling up a remote truck to record live events,” explained Barney
Lee, one of the club’s partners, on the technology they’ve installed. “We
basically put the truck upstairs.”
Looking
beyond developing merely a successful nightclub, Mr. Lee and partner Marco
Cardamone are looking to webcast its events.
The
console downstairs is for the audio and video recording of live events the club
hosts. The console upstairs is for eventual use as a source of webcasting, the
process of using streaming audio and video for transmission over the Internet
– a feature Mr. Cardamone and Mr. Lee hope to begin offering in the next six
months.
“We
founded the club to become a place where local talented musicians across a
variety of genres – jazz, blues, rock, pop – would have a small intimate,
hip venue in which to showcase their work,” said Mr.Cardamone. “Once you
have an environment where local and national acts can come and do their thing in
an intimate setting, we wanted to bring that out to the world through webcasts.”
Club
Cafe’s heavy emphasis on high-tech recording capability is even more unusual
when you consider the club’s size. While the use of webcasting at night clubs
can be found at trend-setting clubs such as the Knitting Factory in New York
City, which has more than one concert stage, Club Cafe has a capacity of only
110 customers.
Don’t
think small; think intimate, say the owners. “For the audience, you have
a proximity to the performer that makes you a part of the performance that you
wouldn’t have in a much larger venue,” said Mr. Cardamone. “We want to
preserve and capture the best of a live performance and play that in the context
of the Internet.”
It
could be the best of both worlds: an intimate venue and the potential to reach a
worldwide audience over the internet. Mr. Lee and Mr. Cardamone believe they may
be the first club in Pittsburgh to pursue webcasting.
“We
know there’s no one else in the market doing this,” said Mr. Cardamone.
“And we wanted to be a first mover.”
Andrew
Rasiej, CEO and president of Digital Club Network, a New York-based company that
seeks to webcast and archive concerts at 41 clubs throughout the country, said
his company has member clubs that are even smaller than Club Cafe.
With
less than 100 clubs webcasting throughout the country, he agreed that small
could be beautiful, and newly marketable with the help of webcasting.
“At
some point, the artists are going to realize that the audience outside of
the venue is greater than the audience inside the venue,” said Mr. Rasiej.
“And that may be the most provocative idea.”
Shooting
for their first webcast in September, Mr. Cardamone and Mr. Lee are perhaps
uniquely positioned to do so. They are the principals of the Pittsburgh office
of marchFIRST (formerly USWeb), one of the largest Internet services firms in
the world, with 8,500 professionals working in 70 offices in 14 countries.
They’re
also among the partners who own the successful Cafe Allegro restaurant, located
right across the street.
“I
think it would be a difficult thing for a club this size to really do,” said
Mr. Lee, considering the low volume of a small capacity club with the costs
of implementing such high-end technology. “I think what really makes us
different is our ability at a high level to capture what is happening in a club
from both an audio and a visual expertise,” he added.
Dave
Brenner, vice president for new media at the Knitting Factory, said that while
his club had been webcasting its events for free for nearly five years, the
quality of current webcasting isn’t good enough to make people want to pay for
it yet.
“I
do believe there’s going to be a convergence of technologies where your TV and
your computer and your stereo will be more integrated into one system,” said
Mr. Brenner. “When that starts to happen, I think pay-per-view will be a more
viable option.”
Since
opening last fall, Club Cafe has hosted a wide range of musical acts, featuring
such local favorites as Bill Deasy, Roger Humphries and Phat Man Dee, as well as
up-and-coming national acts.
The
club’s audio and video capabilities offer the possibility of other kinds of
entertainment as well, such as short films and spoken word performances.
Mr. Cardamone and Mr. Lee are deciding on the best strategy for marketing their
webcasting venture, including whether to offer Club Cafe events as pay-per-view
or free.
Perhaps
the biggest barrier that is keeping streaming audio and video from really taking
off as both an industry and an entertainment outlet is the poor reception
available on the traditional modem speeds most people utilize.
That
is changing quickly. As broadband Internet access, with its far greater carrying
capacity and high-speed connection quality, becomes the norm in American
households, the computer will have the potential to be as effective a medium for
video as television.
That
future is soon enough for Mr. Cardamone and Mr. Lee to begin having early
positive discussions with national recording labels, as well as with local radio
stations WYEP and WDVE.
Key
to the venture will be the talent of the acts themselves as Mr. Lee and Mr.
Cardamone work to help local and national artists reach the broader Internet
audience.
“What
we think we’re really doing is satisfying latent demand. We feel the world is
ready for original content and new voices and doesn’t just want to see
recycled VH-1 content for the rest of their lives,” said Mr. Cardamone.
“There’s
a great range of demographic for new content. We want to be a conduit for
that.”
MR.
SCHOOLEY may be contacted at tschooley@amcity.com.
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