Rolling Loud Announces Virtual Festival and Exclusive Streaming Partnership with Twitch
Rolling Loud is adjusting to the ways of the pandemic, announcing an exclusive streaming partnership with Twitch. The partnership leads to their first virtual festival, Loud Stream, which will happen on Sept. 12-13.
With live shows currently on hiatus, Loud Stream, will provide the opportunity for the world’s largest rap stars to perform live for the first time in months. Loud Stream will be the first of three digital festival experiences. The stream will be complete with state-of-the-art production and star-studded line-ups.
Rolling Loud will also broadcast Hip-Hop driven content on their Twitch channel at the top of September. The content will bring a blend of hip-hop, fashion, food, art, and gaming, serving as a virtual hub for one of the most dedicated fan bases in music.
Shows that are to be included in the partnership range from “The Rotation,” a live stream podcast hosted by Rolling Loud founders, to “Got Bars?,” a six-month-long freestyle competition series, to “Loud Gaming,” a live stream gaming show that pits artists, athletes, and influencers against professional gamers, the Rolling Loud Twitch channel will capture the movement behind the festival.
“Streaming on Twitch transports viewers into a live concert atmosphere and creates an experience for artists to interact with fans in ways only possible on Twitch,” said Will Farrell-Green, Head of Music Content at Twitch. “As in-person concerts are put on hold, we’re working to create an incredible backstage environment that fans can access from anywhere in the world. Rolling Loud has a powerful community of hip-hop fans, and we’re thrilled to partner with them for a first of its kind event that will bring their incredible live music brand to life.”
“At Rolling Loud, our core business lies in exchanging energy with fans. The artist puts out the energy, the fans give it right back to the artist – it’s a complete power exchange. That’s what a concert, and more specifically Rolling Loud, is. We trap energy and the trap is boomin’. When we planned to bring Rolling Loud to the virtual experience, we needed to find a partner that could help create that energy exchange and understand the core DNA of Rolling Loud. It only made sense to partner with Twitch – a service that thrives off of live engagement with fans and champions a diverse collection of creators. The Twitch team has been incredibly supportive in meeting our creative goals and we’re thrilled to be partnering with them,” said Tariq Cherif, Co-Founder/Co-CEO at Rolling Loud
“Partnering with Twitch, we also saw the opportunity to further connect fans with the Rolling Loud brand beyond our flagship live events. Over the years, Rolling Loud has become a pillar in hip-hop culture, from booking emerging artists before they pop off to creating some of the most fire merch drops in the game, and we wanted to further our position in the culture through weekly programming on our Twitch channel,” said Matt Zingler, Co-Founder/Co-CEO at Rolling Loud We’ve always had our eyes on content creation; it felt like the natural next step for the brand, but it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that we had the bandwidth to execute these ideas to the fullest. Twitch gave us the creative control to produce unique shows that hold true to our ‘ahead-of-the-curve’ mentality and play to Twitch’s strengths as the leading live stream platform out there. Expect Rolling Loud to do in the live stream world just as we have done in the festival space.”
Outside of the virtual events, Rolling Loud Miami is currently scheduled for February 2021. The brand will expand to Portugal next Summer.