Hulu's first live-stream concert: Dave Matthews Band
Video site's inaugural live broadcast comes conveniently just a day before the band's long-awaited new album hits stores.
Hulu will live-stream a concert for the first time: Dave Matthews Band at New York's Beacon Theater on June 1.
The online video hub, which announced the event Thursday, will be the only place streaming the concert live, at least legally.
Pop culture brush-up: the Dave Matthews Band was really, really, really huge in the '90s, known for lengthy live jams, for a Phish-like cult following that skewed more preppy than hippie, and for "Ants Marching," which was inescapable if you ever got anywhere near a frat house between 1994 and 1997. People generally loved them or hated them back then, due in no small part to the fact that they were the soundtrack of choice for the jocks rather than the indie kids or nerds.
It's a good fit for Hulu's first live concert broadcast--the site's first live streaming event was a presidential debate last October. The Dave Matthews Band's original Gen-X and Gen-Y fan base is exactly the demographic of 20- and 30-somethings--though not necessarily tech-savvy ones--who would tune into a concert stream online. And conveniently, the date of the show is the day before the band's long-anticipated new album, "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King," hits stores online and offline.
Frontman Dave Matthews was, on an unrelated note, one of the first mainstream musicians to use Twitter actively.
Hulu, meanwhile, is riding the wave of mainstream success in the wake of an edgy TV ad campaign and the big news that Disney would be joining News Corp. and NBC Universal as a partner in the joint venture.