Tomorrowland goes digital with Freecaster’s live streaming expertise
Live events video streaming and global distribution
Founded in 2005, Tomorrowland is one of the largest electronic dance music festivals in the world that takes place every year in Belgium (Europe). For its 2018 edition, Freecaster, a subsidiary of BCE (www.bce.lu), was chosen as Tomorrowland’s festival partner to provide the live stream and global distribution of the event to a large online audience. By creating this new viewing experience, Tomorrowland can reach a wider audience for its event and allow viewers to enjoy the music festival from home.
Freecaster has deployed its online video expertise and technical capabilities to master the entire value chain through a proprietary online video platform. Freecaster can rely on global partners to provide almost unlimited bandwidth across the world (including China).
Tomorrowland chose Freecaster for its expertise in streaming of live events. In fact, Tomorrowland was looking for a fully integrated digital solution, and decided to work with Freecaster.
“The target of our customer was to spread the festival experience to the electronic community with the opportunity to follow live the main scenes of the festival and experience the thrill of Tomorrowland,” explains Ray Dulieu, CEO and founder at Freecaster. “The new version of our video player, with the multi-stream features, allows live streaming, live switch from one stage to the other and even having a clear view on what is coming next.”
The viewer experience at the core of the project:
Freecaster developed a multi-stream video player to enrich the streaming experience. With this integration, Tomorrowland was able to offer to the viewers the possibility to select their own stage on any screen. In addition, the player displays the names of live and upcoming DJs in a dedicated overlay layer, thus creating a unique experience for each viewer.
The selection menu allows viewers to switch from one content to the other without leaving the full screen mode or viewing mode on a smartphone. Each viewer can easily access the different sets appearing in thumbnails inside the player.
On the webpages, Freecaster advance player aims to deliver localized advertisements matching the targeted country. In fact, advertisers who partner with Tomorrowland can display their adverts in the feed preroll of the stream.
All these unique features provided by Freecaster in terms of digital broadcasting, give the Tomorrowland event a global dimension.
Copyright Tomorrowland
A state-of-the-art distribution
With its own private cloud, Freecaster was able to link the live streaming platform to a fully secure environment. Freecaster delivered the live stream to multiple channels such as Tomorrowland’s network, app, website and partners.
Freecaster gathered eleven video streams for live streaming, including the five simultaneous feeds to enhance the final video experience.
Freecaster’s teams were on site for two weekends to ensure the continuity of the event and a seamless customer experience.
Freecaster monitored in real-time the traffic of the video player. Thanks to this tool, Tomorrowland was able to analyze in real-time 24*7 the global audience and retrieve information about the number of visitors, their countries, their impressions and much more.
The use of multiple CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) allows the multiplication of the viewers. Targeting a global reach, including China. Tomorrowland attracted more than 400,000 festival visitors on-site and reached 11 million online views in 2018.
In addition to the visual broadcast coverage, Freecaster delivered the audio traffic over five different radio relays streamed on selected internet radio stations. In order to reach a wider audience, the main playback was distributed and available in live on Tomorrowland’s social networks.
