Real benefit of streaming is as publicity for the jazz club

It’s a technical feat and a convenience, a window into a nocturnal jazz club, and happening in real time only a few clicks away accessed from the comfort of your own home via your computer. With the recent streaming of gigs live at clubs such as Smalls in New York and Ronnie Scott’s in London just this week there’s the beginning of the trend in this direction in jazz. But the technology has been adopted for a while in pop and rock, and websites such as The Guardian’s have streamed rock and even opera before and yet it’s still not commonplace. Whether streaming live catches on or not in jazz after this flurry of activity is not really at issue, and let’s face it only the most organised clubs, with the resources and vision to match, can even begin to contemplate the streaming option. Yet the old days of interminable buffering and technology problems are now mostly in the past. Streaming can be seen to address a need. Most jazz broadcast on the radio, and that’s mostly via the BBC and Jazz FM, is not broadcast live at all, there’s usually a delay of weeks or months before we can listen, although Django Bates at the Proms later this summer will presumably air live. TV is completely out of the question for live or even same-day coverage for jazz. So streaming does plug a “real time” gap as no other mass media technology is catering for live jazz gigs currently. Yet despite this capability I really can’t see jazz gigs streamed too often. Partly it’s because of the cost although they’re not as high as radio or TV but are still “an extra”. If the artist (unlike Wynton Marsalis) is not very well known irrespective of their merit then the potential audience may well be judged too specialist although that’s not stopping the very niche Smalls in New York. Streaming may well be wheeled out from time to time here and there for special occasions but its real benefit is as publicity for the club involved even if, looking at comments on the Guardian website after the Marsalis gig, viewers seemed to enjoy the experience. The fact remains though: watching a gig on a computer even if it is live will never replicate being there. Most people would recognise that. It’s not even close to the thrill of listening to an album. Once the novelty wears off, the fact that it is a “club first” or “new”, then consuming live gigs streamed on the web may well lose its appeal. If clubs think streaming for free will keep punters away then ultimately streaming won’t ever stand a chance. Stephen Graham