CUSTOMER STORY
The network cameras that are music to our ears In 2020, when we probably needed it the most, the whole entertainment industry practically shut down. COVID-19 hit the music scene extremely hard. With lockdown and attendance restrictions, there was simply no room for live music. However, desperate times call for ingenious initiatives. Not everyone was satisfied to wait to see what would happen. All around the world, people were finding new ways to record and perform and getting their music out to an audience. Malmö Live, the concert hall in Sweden’s third-largest city and home of Malmö Symphony Orchestra (MSO), is a prime example. Starting in March 2020, concerts were canceled or rescheduled. Despite the new, totally unforeseen playing field, Malmö Live’s management acted fast. They considered what it would take to live-stream concerts – to build a Digital Concert Hall. Of course, you could assign an external professional producer, but this is an expensive solution which would limit the number of concerts. Malmö Live is publicly funded, and its function is to arrange concerts, classical music, and other genres, catering to existing and new target groups within and beyond the region. New application for surveillance cameras It was pretty clear that the weekly, full-scale symphony orchestra concerts required an external producer. These productions were just too advanced to produce in-house. But would it be possible to stream the smaller-format concerts, such as chamber orchestras and jazz ensembles? To get these concerts out to an audience stuck at home. The Malmö Live IT and tech team got just a couple of days to evaluate the situation and report back to management. Without many precedents to learn from. As luck would have it, Malmö Live had previously initiated a project focusing on digital concert solutions. This project had already provided the concert hall with several Axis network cameras.
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“We had these cameras, which got us thinking,” says Anders Tannlund, head of IT at Malmö Live. “The first step was to check if we were allowed to use them in this new way. We contacted Axis and got the go-ahead.” Strong commitment saved the day The obvious second step turned out to be trickier – how to do it. How do you use cameras typically used for surveillance to broadcast live music? Anders says, “We took what we had and made do with that as best we could.”
With just a few days’ advance, the tech team broadcasted the first live stream using the Axis cameras and in-house equipment in April. Looking back, Anders says, “We dove right in. We didn’t have the technical experience, but the entire tech team got involved. The first two concerts were a bit touch and go. Sure, there were some technical issues, such as lagging. The production could also have been smoother and more professional, but we saw that it could work, and we learned a lot from it.”
