Madonna and the future of online concerts

Some were forced to watch the show later to avoid the virtual queues

By Dylan Reynolds, CNN.com Europe

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Madonna's London gig, broadcast live on the Internet, was billed by Microsoft's MSN Web site as a chance for viewers around the world to take "a virtual front row seat."

But as she burst into her first song on Tuesday night, many fans were still queuing outside the virtual venue, struggling to connect to the live feed.

One frustrated user wrote on a Madonna message board: "My nerves were broken down trying to get connected."

Another fan who managed to connect, wrote: "It's very choppy, like watching a slide show. Maybe the servers are just jammed."

MSN says nine million people successfully logged onto the gig.

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One of them was Neil Mason, of the magazine New Musical Express (NME). But even he struggled to get a connection, despite using state-of-the-art technology.

"It took me a while to get on -- I got a lot of errors, and then network problems," he said.

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"I was very impressed by what I saw once I was connected, but I shudder to think what most people were looking at."

Matthew Bingham, editor of The Net magazine, based in the UK, estimates that nine out of 10 people who tried to log onto the broadcast around the world will have been disappointed.

"People expect the broadcast to be all singing and dancing, but often what they see is very different.

"This kind of entertainment really is a broadband one, and although it is fun to try with a standard modem, it is also very frustrating.

"There is a danger that if you build up people's hopes, and then the promise is not delivered, you put people off trying again."

But MSN marketing manager Tracy Blacher said many of those watching the concert online had better views than those inside the Brixton Academy.

"It's unfair to imply there are huge number of disappointed Madonna fans. I'm really sorry there were people who could not see the concert, but I would urge them to come back to the site to watch a recording," she said.

Production company Done And Dusted teamed up with MSN to put the concert on the Web, with about 25 cameras trained on the star.

Company spokesman Iain Watt said he was "incredibly pleased" with the result and said the company had received excellent feedback from around the world.

He said that for those logging on with 28.8K modems, only an audio stream was provided. "And for those with 56K modems, you are never going to get TV quality," he said.

"As the quality of players develop, then in the next two or three years we will be able to get almost TV-like pictures.

"Part of our role is to challenge the technology available at the moment, so it is forced to catch up."

Despite the technological barriers, Mason of the NME says artists are still queuing up to get their music on the Internet.

"There's no doubt the Internet enables artists to expose their music on a global scale and helps sales."

But he says that for real fans there was only one place to be on Tuesday evening -- inside the concert hall.

"You can never get across the atmosphere and the electricity of a live event. The only electricity the Internet users will have experienced will be that coming out of their plug sockets."

The future success of online gigs rests with broadband -- the high-speed transmission of vast amounts of electronic data.

The analogy of a water pipe is often used -- the broader the pipe, the more water can be pumped along it. Broadband can use cable technology, radio frequency transmissions, or satellite systems.

Broadband, still in its infancy, is expected to revolutionise the Internet.

Users will be able to stay online all the time, watching films, listening to music, sending and receiving video e-mail, and taking part in video conferencing.

Less than one percent of the world's households use broadband Internet access, according to a 1999 global report called International High-Speed Access: The Residential Marketplace.

But it predicted this figure would reach up to 30 percent by 2003 in several markets, including Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, and the U.S.

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Done and Dusted

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