Peter O'Fallon is a very successfully TV and film director ("House," "Northern Exposure," "Suicide Kings" with Christopher Walken) who also loves music. He bought a nightclub two years ago, The Gig in Los Angeles. Inspired by has experience in video, he decided to try an experiment. www.livefromthegig.com is the result.

Every night a different band is featured at the club. The club offers to tape each band's concert. The band can decline but most take advantage of the opportunity. The club posts the concert the next day at livefromthegig.com. While the Gig only accommodates 200 people, the average number of viewers on the web is more than a thousand. Even though the streams are free, both the club and the bands gain a lot more exposure than they would otherwise. Plus the Gig allows the bands to sell merchandise and DVDs of their performance on a web page constructed for each artist. The artists share in the revenues.

O'Fallon says that although start up costs are high (he installed four cameras to tape each show) and broadband costs for video are still fairly expensive, he looks forward to turning a profit soon. The next step in the experiment is to sell audio downloads of the artists' music and eventually sell audiovisual downloads of the concerts as well. The artists will also share in these revenues.

If you would like to learn more about The Gig and livefromthegig.com, you can tune into my interview with O'Fallon at myrealbroadcast.com (click on the Future of the Music Business show).