For immediate support with your Online Concert Thing experience, email ben@onlineconcertthing.com.

---

Why can’t I see the concert?
The first important helpful hint is to log in: you have to be logged in to see the concert.
If you’re on the concert page and you don’t see a concert playing, have you pressed the “PLAY” triangle in the video player?
Try reloading your page (F5 often does this, depending on your operating system).
Check to make sure that the concert is actually starting… time zones get me every time. The video stream doesn’t start until just before or on the posted start time.

I can’t find the link for the concert I bought.
Go to My Concerts – you should see a list of links to concerts you’ve purchased. Find the concert you want to watch, and click the “CLICK HERE TO WATCH” button.

I can’t get the chat to work.
Make sure you’ve chosen a username. Then enter some text. If the text doesn’t show up, try refreshing your page.

Why is the picture freezing/stuttering? (AKA “How does streaming work?”)
Streaming video is challenging, even in 2020. Here’s how it works, to give you an idea:

First the artist sends their video stream to our servers. This relies on the artist’s computer working well (remember the last time you cursed at your computer when it wouldn’t send an email?) and their internet connection being strong. Internet connections fluctuate all the time, and uploading is almost always slower than downloading. (Remember the last time you had to wait for that picture to upload in your email?) We work hard to smooth these things out, but sometimes a stream still falls apart due to a power outage, equipment failure, or other circumstances beyond the artist’s and our control. Despite everyone’s hard work, if the artist’s audio or video doesn’t reach our servers, there’s nothing we can do!

Next our servers process the video to deliver it in as compact a format as possible. Our servers are the same ones that power Amazon Prime, so they’re extremely strong and reliable. We do our best to prioritise audio, because we’re mainly a concert streaming site. This is very much the opposite of what companies like Zoom do, where their priority is making the connection easily – but they severely degrade the audio (and often the video too) to make that happen.

Then the stream is transmitted to your browser via the internet. This part can also have problems – especially these days with so many people streaming Netflix etc. Internet service providers have to make choices about what traffic they let through, and they don’t have infinite bandwidth either. Often this explains short pauses in your video.

I purchased a tip reward but I haven’t received my reward yet.
Tip rewards are handled by the artists, not by OnlineConcertThing. Please email the artist directly to give them a gentle nudge about your tip reward. However, if you’ve nudged the artist and not received an appropriate response, please email ben@onlineconcertthing.com with your order number, and I’ll either not-so-gently nudge the artist, or issue you with an immediate refund.