BalconyTV: The saga of an Irish music service that went global
BalconyTV was founded in Dublin in 2006.
Wayne’s World began in a basement. The Irish version started on an inauspicious balcony where, before it became the stage and occasional launchpad for numerous musical guests, was used to store the rubbish.
BalconyTV was a wheeze cooked up by three friends living on Dame St in central Dublin, and then improbably became a global online phenomenon, before a peculiar and confused descent back to something like obscurity. The story is now the focus of a three-part podcast, allowing those involved to have their say, with the series also showcasing the vagaries of the music industry.
BalconyTV was the brainchild of friends Stephen O’Regan, Tom Millett and Pauline Freeman. The podcast is by Mark Graham, a lecturer in the Department of Arts at SETU (South-East Technical University) in Waterford, also a musician himself. In fact, his former band, the highly regarded King Kong Company, turned down the opportunity to appear on BalconyTV - unlike sundry others, such as Ed Sheeran, Kaiser Chiefs, and Mumford and Sons.
According to Graham, the trio who first set up BalconyTV in 2006 were hungover when the idea first came to them. One of the group, Tom, was a musician and was practising double bass on the balcony. The others thought it looked good and so BalconyTV was born.
“It started a little bit before YouTube,” explains Graham. “They had their own website first, with a Flash media player, then YouTube came on stream so in the very early days of YouTube they were early adopters. It is de rigour now to video performances but they were the first to do it, not just in Ireland but maybe in the world.”
At first the trio recorded a magician doing his act on the balcony, or someone juggling a football, but it was music performances in this incongruous settings complete with background traffic noises, which caught the imagination of people online.
For Graham, BalconyTV formed the template for enduring online music shows such as the Tiny Desk series by US broadcaster NPR. The difference, however, was that BalconyTV kept getting bigger. And bigger.
The first big name to play the balcony was Paul Brady, who is among the interviewees for the new podcast. “He said it was not what he was used to, there was traffic audible in the background but it worked quite well for them,” he said.
“That took them from a place of unknown music to where other musicians said ‘hang on, this thing might work for us to get us some gigs’.”
In those early days no money was being generated, but BalconyTV became increasingly popular, aided by interviews with the likes of Dave Fanning and in scooping some national web awards. Things really accelerated, however, when the BalconyTV team were nominated for an international Web Award.
They were contacted by people in. Germany who wanted to replicate the idea, and so BalconyTV became an international franchise, exploding to the point where balconies all over the world - some, surely, more architecturally wondrous that the original back on Dame St - were playing host to bands in 100 cities all over the world. Ed Sheeran and Mumford and Sons played Dublin, but other acts, many of whom would go on to achieve fame, played those other balconies.
“It was not just a video channel, it was network for musicians, but also producers and presenters,” Graham says. “Some of them went on to work for the BBC, for CNN, BBC radio.”
He says there was no shortage of acts wishing to play - in fact, the BalconyTV team were “swamped”.
According to Graham: “We [King Kong Company] got invited to play on it and we said nah, not for us. We did not know that much about it, we were not going to be travelling up to Dublin during week, we were working. It wasn’t that we disregarded it, it just was not on our radar.”
It was on the radar of pretty much everyone else though, including music industry types. BalconyTV did get some investment from people in Ireland, but bigger players started hovering.
“It is kind of like a microcosm of the music industry,” Graham says. “Three friends start something creative for fun, next thing it is globally popular, then large entertainment industry and, in this case, a record label comes in and offers them loads of money.”
There were meetings in New York City, talk of MTV becoming involved, and as per the podcast, vast sums being bandied around. One investor advised the BalconyTV team to not accept anything less than $18m.
What actually transpired is still, to this day, a little hazy. Reports in March 2014 outlined how BalconyTV had been purchased by Orchard, a New York-based distributor for independent musicians. It seemed to augur an even brighter future, but instead - and for whatever reason - in effect the lights went out.
According to the podcast, videos were delisted, the original team involved either left or seem to have been phased out. There is a lot off conjecture and anyone wanting to delve deeper is advised to listen to the three-part podcast. A form of BalconyTV still exists to this day, but the times have changed.
For Graham, the story also highlights the often-difficult interface between the creative and financial sides of the music industry - a place that now has considerably less cash sloshing around than it used to.
“I think because they were first to do it they showed what was possible with a platform like that,” he says. “It also shows how hungry musicians are for exposure.”
While fantastic new music continues to be created, the industry has certainly changed, a situation not helped by the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on concerts, now the most likely way to generate revenue for bands that are not huge but who can tour.
BalconyTV worked brilliantly as a showcase, Mark says, in an era when there was still some mystery attached to certain acts, when you could not necessarily click on a link and listen to an obscure Brazilian or Japan see radio show in real time. Such choice could actually mean people are so overwhelmed they just keep listening to the same songs.
“There is more old music that is older than 10 years listened to now than ever before,” Graham says. “People are not listening to new music because there is so much of it.”
The saga of BalconyTV certainly had an impact on the three key players who started it; according til Mark, Stephen says it was “all consuming” and “like a bad relationship”.
Perhaps so, but it all makes for a fascinating tale.
- The podcast documentary will be the final instalment of the Irish Music Industry Podcast. All three episodes of The Untold Story of BalconyTV will be available from Wednesday February 1 on all the usual podcast platforms.
- A preview and launch of the documentary with special guests Stephen James Smith (poet and BalconyTV performer), Joanne Collins (producer & presenter BalconyTV Cork), and Stephen O’Regan (founder and former CEO of BalconyTV), will take place at the multidisciplinary arts festival - Hedge School Doolin on Saturday January 28. See doolinarts.ie
