Portugal: Platform for live music shows at home launches with free gig on Friday

A Peste & Sida concert on Friday kicks off Gigs em Casa (gigs at home), a new digital platform to broadcast live music shows, some paid and some free, it was announced on Tuesday.

The platform (gigsemcasa.com) is an initiative of the promoter Amazing Events, with production of the RCA Club in Lisbon, where the concerts will take place, without an audience, and “under all conditions of safety and hygiene”.

“Although we want to live normally again, no one can say when we will have the pleasure of going to see a show again. That’s why we have to try to reinvent our habits and that’s the context in which Gigs at Home emerges”.

According to Amazing Events, “all the artists, technicians and participants in the show will be paid, so as to reactivate a part of an area of activity so affected” by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The goal is that all of them “will be able to maintain some of their income by using the digital means available”.

The first concert, free of charge, will be Peste & Sida on Friday, with another one already scheduled, by Freddie Locks, on the 8th.

According to the promoter, these concerts will be free, but there will be others with a paid ticket, “with quite low prices”, providing an access code to the platform.

The platform is launched days before the end of the state of emergency in Portugal, in force since March 19 to contain the Covid-19 pandemic and which has led to the closure of practically the entire cultural sector.

According to the government, the recovery of economic activity will be phased and progressive during the month of May, but it is not yet known when the cultural sector will be able to reopen and what are the rules for organizing events with public.

In March, another platform – Play It Safe – was launched by the promoter Gig Club in partnership with the publisher Omnichord Records, which provides concerts by Portuguese artists, from their homes, paid by the audience who attend.

In a similar way, last week launched “Música da Casa”, on the Patreon platform, where to watch the concerts of Portuguese musicians you have to be a member of the website (www.patreon.com/musicadacasa) and pay a monthly fee.