The Rolling Stones streamed five songs from their Cotton Bowl concert in Dallas on November 18, 1994. The roughly 20-minute transmission carried live sound and pictures from their Voodoo Lounge tour over the internet, with “Not Fade Away” and “Tumbling Dice” among the songs reaching connected computers.
Getting that performance online involved a considerable journey beyond the stadium. Broadcast organizer Thinking Pictures later described how the Dallas feed traveled by satellite through Vyvx before passing to Bell Atlantic in Jersey City. At Thinking Pictures’ offices, a Sun workstation put the feed onto the internet. The operation combined the infrastructure of a television broadcast with equipment capable of delivering moving images through a computer network.
The internet portion used MBone, short for multicast backbone. It allowed participating computers to receive a shared live transmission, distributing the data efficiently through the network. Researchers had already been using the system for meetings and collaboration. With the Stones, that same technology carried a stadium rock performance to viewers beyond the venue.
Access was the catch. Receiving the show required suitable hardware, software and a fast network connection, equipment more readily available at universities, research facilities and corporate offices than in an ordinary home. For some viewers, watching also meant gathering around somebody else’s connection. The 1996 book MBONE: Multicasting Tomorrow’s Internet describes groups assembling at connected sites for the Stones broadcast, sharing access to equipment that few fans could take for granted.
Mick Jagger acknowledged those remote listeners from the stage. His welcome ended with a suitably cautious wish: “I hope it doesn’t all collapse!”
That small computer audience gave the technology exposure well beyond its research community. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory’s December 1994 newsletter reported that the concert attracted international news coverage and raised MBone’s profile. The laboratory had helped develop the tools behind the network, whose earlier uses included scientific conferences and space shuttle coverage. The Stones supplied a very different reason to find a connected workstation.
There was a music-business calculation behind the experiment, too. Billboard’s contemporary reporting described the Dallas transmission as a promotion for the band’s Miami pay-per-view concert the following week. Showtime Event Television worked with Thinking Pictures and Sun Microsystems on the internet broadcast. The short online performance gave that television event another route to potential viewers while testing how a concert could reach people through a computer.
The Miami show aired live on pay-per-view on November 25. Within a week, the tour had delivered a five-song internet transmission from Dallas and a complete concert telecast from Florida.
