Yoop eSpace: Virtual, Mobile & Interactive Events Venue Launched

U.S. company Yoop offers a new way of hosting and attending events in a virtual venue dubbed the Yoop eSpace, where performers will be able to at least see their audience again, while mass gatherings are still banned. 

The Yoop eSpace combines live events with TV-like production quality and online interaction capabilities – whether it’s concerts, comedy shows, keynotes or presentations.

Artists are captured in high definition by multiple cameras, which are directed from a control room. They perform in front of giant screens, on which they can see their audience, or at least a fraction of it. Individual fans can be invited onto a central screen for a special one-on-one with their favorite artists.

Yoop provides the personnel and equipment necessary to guarantee what company founder Benoit Fredette described as “TV-like production quality” during the launch event, June 8. 

The launch event took place at Yoop’s dedicated facility at the Place des Arts in Montreal, Canada, but it is also possible to set up a Yoop eSpace in venues all the way down to artists’ living rooms.

A partnership with Solotech will facilitate the distribution of the necessary technology in the markets where the company has launched in, which include LA, Nashville, the greater of New York area, as well as the greater London area and the region of Manchester, England.

“We will monitor demand and explore other openings or deployments of our mobile production kits,” Fredette told Pollstar.

“It was built as a compliment to the existing live shows. We envisioned this as an additional show on tour, which all the fans could join – the ones that missed the show in the city, the one’s whose city didn’t get visited, and even the ones who didn’t find a nanny,” Fredette explained during the launch event, adding that “the pandemic shifted the release timeline.”

Fredette continued, “Instead of just bringing a new product to market, we found a way to bring back to work thousands of industry workers. Just here at the Yoop eSpace in Montreal, 2,300 music industry jobs were created.”

The Yoop eSpace can be adjusted to all stage sized and budgets. The number of screen, tv cameras, production crew, who run it like a full-fledged TV show, will be adjusted accordingly. 

Costs will be negotiated on an individual basis with the venue or artist, or whoever hires the Yoop eSpace.

Fredette told Pollstar: “Yoop gives the distribution power to content creators, who can select the partners of their choice. The content creators can customize multiple aspects of their events, including price, capacity, format, and replay availability, which means that artists can truly design the experience of their event.

“They can create an intimate event with a small-number of fans – this is perfect for higher-priced events with a deeper level of individual interaction – or they can deliver larger events. Yoop eSpace can accommodate a near-infinite number of attendees at a given time, so the opportunity for monetization at scale is substantial.”

He went on to explain, that “the proceeds are controlled by the content providers. Yoop charges a small, flat transaction fee on each purchase, and the Yoop eSpace model enables high-quality productions at a fraction of the cost of traditional events or tours.

“This is not the case with most tours, where high ticketing fees, secondary markets, and touring costs absorb most of the profits from an event.”

Fredette believes the Yoop eSpace is also a particularly interesting proposition for performers, who get tired of or too old for touring, who want to spend more time with the family etc.

What is more, according to Fredette, “even the most successful performers will tell you, they’re running out of time. There’s not enough touring days to go to every country and see their fans around the world.”

Last but not least, “up and coming artists can hardly afford touring costs. Very few performers generate a profit with their first tour,” he explained, suggesting that artists could make a profit from their first concert on Yoop.

Alicia Moffet is a case in point. The Canadian singer just launched her new album and performed her first show with the new songs in the Yoop eSpace in Montreal. She sold 5,500 tickets at $20 each, grossing $110,000.

“After all costs, she turned a majority of the proceeds into profits,” said Fredette, without disclosing detailed figures.

Not all fans who will be purchasing a ticket for their favorite artist’s show will fit on the big screen, which is why the directors in the Yoop control room have the ability to randomly select viewers and invite them to be teleported inside the Yoop eSpace. 

“We built an entire operating system to invite, rotate, move users on screens. By default they’re muted, but can be unmuted one by one or simultaneously,” Fredette explained.

The tech behind Yoop should also make for a lag-free experience for both the fans and the artists when interacting with each other, no matter how large the audience.

Said Fredette, “We perfected it so much that we’re down to two frames, or just over 30 milliseconds delay for interaction. To put this into perspective, that’s half of what is detectable by the human eye. For a stand-up comedian, it means that when you crack a joke, the laughters come straight at you. For musicians, when you drop the bass the crowd goes for it.”

Anyone interested in hiring a Yoop eSpace for an event can get in touch with the team on the company’s website.