The music of the night doesn’t have to end when you leave the theater anymore thanks to a new on-demand streaming service.
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Users can buy a monthly subscription for $14.99 and or a yearly one for $169.99.
The idea isn’t to eat away at the live-theater-going audience.
BroadwayHD is available through connected devices, including mobile phones, tablets, desktops and laptops, as well as via TVs with Apple TV and Google Chromecast. Much like the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD attempts to bring its stage performances to a wider audience, Direct from Broadway and now BroadwayHD are looking to expand the theater district’s fan base. Most of the titles come from the BBCWorldwide North America, so the service boasts a large selection of United Kingdom stage productions, including several Shakespearean plays.
The brain child of Tony-winning producers Stewart Lane and Bonnie Comley, BroadwayHD is actually built on top of Direct from Broadway, a service that has been showing theater performances in movie theaters for the last two years.
Despite its name, there are now only five musicals in the library: Memphis, Putting it Together, Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, Tintypes and Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical, with David Hasselhoff, pictured, in the lead role.
“We will always be live theatre lovers first, so we acted quickly when we saw an unmet opportunity to expand the reach of theatre to those that can’t experience it or want to keep experiencing it over and over”, said Lane in a press statement. And I know that most, if not all, Broadway shows are recorded for posterity at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts. BroadwayHD may get out of the starting gate more successfully than a long line of would-be competitors, including Broadway Near You, founded by Wall Streeter Ed Greenberg, which hoped to stream the revival of Driving Miss Daisy, with James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave, but is still raising capital, according to its website.
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The service has promised to add to its title offerings, but there is no word yet on potential SVOD and distribution deals to licence new shows. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon offer a number of movie musicals such as Grease and Newsies, and Hulu offers a live 2011 recording of Lord of the Dance.
