On Saturday, April 18, 2020, I watched the Versuz producer battle with Babyface and Teddy Riley on Instagram. Now mind you so many people who have not been going live on Instagram before have been doing it so I have not watched many but I knew I wanted to watch this one. Think of it as the rap battles back in the day you don’t have time to do mic check – as a matter of fact, with any technical errors, they freestyle.
What happened with Teddy Riley was what happens when you teach your elders how to use Instagram. I believe it was not the best platform for that. Ego is a no go. I had a WTF moment when Teddy Riley decided to soundcheck in the middle of a battle. All he or one of his many team members had to do was read the comments, there were thousands of people saying the same thing. He had approximately six people in the big studio with him. Aren’t we supposed to be distancing from non-family members?
At first, I was biased because I can understand how much you miss the stage if you are an extrovert. I have attended plenty of rehearsals and soundchecks as an award show seat filler and music photographer. There is a reason why they do it when there are fewer than 100 people in the building. Then I changed my mind. He was doing too much.
My heart goes out to Babyface because he already contracted the virus and got better but he was by himself in his studio. Throughout time, the countless comments repeatedly stated that there was an echo. I heard it as soon as Babyface (And I am hearing impaired!). I thought it was a speaker system error on Babyface’s side. But then I realized Babyface had headphones on so it was definitely Teddy’s Live Concert Set-Up causing the error.
With that being said I wanted to share five tips for you if you plan on using Instagram Live or Facebook Live with another person:
- Make sure you are on the same page with who you want to go live with – go live when the other person is live to catch it quickly. The way to even go live with someone on Instagram is they have to request to go live with you as soon as they join your live video.
- Keep It Simple – Don’t Do Too Much! Every other person who has done it before you, did it with just what they already have – a studio, one microphone, and headphones.
- Do Not Start Over! Keep the show going It is so hard for people to generate 400k views – that’s considered viral Time is literally money. I mean, both artists have a handful of Grammys under their belt.
- Test on another account – if you are doing something new and you have a huge following you don’t want to tarnish your brand so make a temporary account to try going live with the other person, so you know what steps to take. Keep in mind that you are still performing in front of thousands of people even if you don’t see them or believe it.
- These same tips qualify for Persciope when you go live by yourself on Twitter or even on Zoom.
I hope you got a few tips and pointer from this post. As many times as it was postponed. I appreciate the persistence but I will not be watching the battle as they try again Monday, April 20 at 8 pm EST. I look forward to reading the tweets and headlines like I have been doing in the past. Like this post? Please share it with a friend!