Music in Zoom Event Lobby

[jkrauser]

Is this a feature? Can I add music to the lobby of this zoom event? It's quite boring otherwise.

[Ray_Harwood]

Hey, @jkrauser and @avs --

First, I guess I'd start with the caveat that any music would need to be licensed.  But I'm sure you knew that!

There's no current way to add "background" music to the lobby, but there is a creative way to provide this at some level.

1. Add a Meeting session to your Event; call it "Lobby Music" or something more creative.
2. Make a separate utility account an Alternate Host (it can be a Basic/Free account).  (Alternative: If you have nothing else to do, you could do this from your account.)
3. Load up some music to be played by this Alternate host.  Be sure to configure Original Sound and route your music source to the Zoom microphone input.
4. Log into the Lobby from the Alternate Host account,
5. Start the "Lobby Music" meeting with the Alternate host.
6. Turn on "Stream to Lobby".
7. Play music.

Of course, this won't just start playing music in the Lobby -- people would have to select the Lobby Music live stream and play it.  But this give people the option "to play, or not to play"; some might not like your music selection, others are having side conversations in the office or at home and don't want the distraction, etc.  But "it's a way".

You can use this Zoom web page to make this a feature request directly to Zoom staff:
https://www.zoom.us/feed 
Us volunteers in the Zoom Community don’t have a way to handle feature requests.

[lzhang12]

Would this same functionality work for video?

[Ray_Harwood]

Hi, @lzhang12,

Yes, in fact you can't really "just stream audio" with the approach above... you'd also be streaming the video.  So if you had a demo video, or some promo videos from sponsors, for example, you might create a meeting called "Lobby TV".  Then start the room and use Screen Share to play the videos you wanted them to see.

[lzhang12]

Thanks so much! For clarification, does the lobby video still need to be manually started by a user, or can the livestream be automatically available for participants to view as soon as they join?

[Ray_Harwood]

There's currently no way to automatically initiate the video unattended, that I'm aware of.  I made a little test event and experimented a little.  I think you'd need someone to be "projectionist" in the  "Lobby TV" Room to initiate the video and remain in the room... leaving the room would stop the video.

You could do this yourself with an alternate login (on a VM or a small BeeLink or NUC device).  It would be a separate Basic (free) account that you make Speaker or Alternate Host for the meeting.

Note that it's possible to upload videos for Sessions and for the Conference, but these are limited to 50M size and 30 seconds duration.  The Session or Conference "image" shows, which when clicked, loads and plays the video one time through.