Hulu Streaming Austin City Limits Music Festival

Hulu, a streaming video site created for television programming, is streaming selected artists from the Austin City Limits Music Festival this weekend. They seemed to be stepping in for a void recently created when the AT&T Blueroom recently exited the streaming of festivals. As a person who has direct knowledge of the model I knew it was only a matter of time before AT&T realized they were overpaying for the privilege. Not exactly sure of the model associated with the Hulu stream but based on the level of artists participating it seems to replicate that of of AT&T's, using music as a loss leader to drive end user awareness to the site. Unfortunately not very sustainable once the margins are calculated and even more important, another step backwards for live music online. A model can exist in the online live music world but it takes cooperation by all intellectual property owners, an argument that has been debated far too long and with too much destruction in the music industry as it relates to music in general online.