The Digital Club Network is to host a four-day webcast concert series, Digital Club Festival. The event is set to launch on Saturday, July 22, with nearly 200 bands performing at 35 wired venues across the US. Now in its fifth year, this is the first time that the festival will expand beyond the bounds of New York, with performances in L.A., Chicago, San Francisco and other cities to be webcast from DCN’s network of clubs. Performing at this year’s event are big names like Wu-Tang, Mos Def, Sonic Youth and Patti Smith. They will be supported by unsigned bands, whose webcasts will then become property of DCN, providing they sign over the performance rights to the company. The annual Digital Club Festival, formerly known as IntelFest, was created by New York club-owners Michael Dorf and Rasiej. It has both archived and live performances available on demand to anyone with a phat enough Internet connection. Selling music online is famously yet to prove itself as a business model, but DCN hope they can make money from selling and reselling live performances - although they admit they haven’t really got their revenue streams sorted out yet. The organisers also realise that much of what contributes to the magic of a live performance will not translate in a webcast, but argue that there are several niche audiences to whom the archives will provide ‘tremendous value’ - like college kids, who are huge music fans and huge online music consumers, but can’t get into the clubs in the US unless they have a faked ID. DCN also mention fat, idle A&R men (well, they didn’t specifically say either of those things about them) who might want to check bands out from their own armchair. ‘We’ve signed exclusive webcasting deals with the best clubs in almost major city in the U.S for up-and-coming bands,’ says DCN’s COO, Ted Werth. ‘In the future, when anyone wants to watch an old show by the next blink-182, they’ll have to come to us.‘The festival, billed as ‘The World’s Largest Online Music Event’, runs from July 22-25. Check it out while it’s still free. Are we rocking out yet? The Digital Club Festival.