We first wrote about Japanese ticketing firm Zaiko in April 2019 when it raised its first round of seed funding, and again a year later with a deeper dive into how it had adapted towards ticketed livestreams in the first weeks of the Covid-19 lockdown.
Now the company is building on those efforts with a ‘Zaiko Seed’ fund aimed at independent artists, with ¥50m (around $475k) set aside for paying out as advances for livestream shows.
The idea is that artists apply to the scheme, and Zaiko will then pre-purchase a certain amount of tickets for their planned event and pay out to the artist an advance that they can use to fund their production costs. Zaiko will then sell tickets to fans.
“After over 3,000 events and 1 million streaming tickets sold in 6 months, we know what online content is successful and we have learned that production quality is key – this means making a livestream worth charging for requires upfront costs, whether an audio engineer, cameras, or set design,” said COO Lauren Rose Kocher.
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