Normally the music business is fixated on the ad breaks and halftime show at the Super Bowl each year as this is such a huge marketing opportunity as well as a hefty synchronisation payday. But things are changing.
Beyoncé performed at the halftime show of the Super Bowl in February 2013 and then surprise-released her self-titled visual album in December that year. The NFL was obviously taking notes.
This year for the game on 2nd February, it created a live visual album that was assembled, piece by piece, from the music that punctuated the whole spectacle. They called it Super Bowl LIV Live. The serendipity of the Roman numerals (LIV) showing it’s the 54th Super Bowl and being a near-homonym of “live” was clearly too good an opportunity to pass up.
Demi Lovato performed the National Anthem and Yolanda Adams (with The Children’s Voice Chorus) sang ‘America The Beautiful’ to open the game while Jennifer Lopez and Shakira performed the halftime show. Each performance went live on DSPs (including Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and YouTube) shortly after they happened, eventually building up to a full audio and visual album. It could also have been pre-saved/pre-added on Tidal ahead of the game on Sunday.
Proceeds from the National Anthem and ‘America The Beautiful’ will go to the NFL’s Inspire Change grant programme. “This visual and audio album is the first of its kind and will allow fans to experience the greatness of the artists’ performance on Super Bowl Sunday at their fingertips and across multiple platforms anytime they choose so,” said Brian Rolapp, chief media & business officer of the NFL. “We are happy to continue the way we enhance the fan experience for NFL fans everywhere.”
There are licensing challenges here (although knowing what song rights needed to be cleared in advance will have helped), but the fact that it happened at all should be a trigger for music award shows to think about what they can do about near-instant delivery of their key performances. This is where striking while the iron is hot – not wheeling out an album weeks after the fact – can have a profound impact.
