According to a recent piece in The Guardian, the former Smashing Pumpkins drummer, and a legendary figure
behind the kit, has tired of the rigors of the road and embarked on a new
adventure as CEO of the Chicago-based LiveOne, a tech company whose main
product, CrowdSurfing, is a an interactive streaming service for live shows. Chamberlin’s relationship with LiveOne began as an investor
and advisor; he became CEO of the firm about a year and a half ago. But the basic platform and its potential was something that had appealed to Chamberlin way before his involvement with the company.
[Chamberlin with Smashing Pumpkins, AOL Sessions, 2007.]
“When I saw the CrowdSurfing application, it immediately took me back to
scenarios with the Pumpkins. We looked at live
streaming as another revenue source with the Pumpkins. [Billy] Corgan and I used
to talk about it, but we always whittled that reality down to the way
people consume the content. Somebody looking at the event through a
laptop with crappy speakers isn’t going to drive the economics. We
needed to wait for live streaming to get better.”
LiveOne is also contemplating eventually expanding beyond music and delving into mega-church and political events, as well.
