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Event Management

Sell access to session recordings

Host session videos and unlock them for the ticket holders who bought the right pass.

3 min readUpdated 2026-07-29

The gathering ends and the recordings exist. Someone who came to the retreat wants to watch the afternoon workshop they missed while they were at the sound healing session down the hall. Someone who could not make the trip at all would still pay to watch the keynote from home, if only there were a way to buy in.

Session recordings on BrightStar attach video to the sessions of an event and let you control who is allowed to play it back. Access follows what someone actually bought — a ticket, a pass, a recordings-only purchase — rather than a link that can be copied and passed along. That distinction is what keeps a recording connected to the pass that paid for it, instead of drifting away the first time someone forwards an email.

Access follows the pass

You decide which passes unlock which recordings, session by session. A weekend ticket might open only the talks that happened on the days it covered. A separate recordings pass, sold to people who were never at the gathering at all, might open the entire library instead.

This matters because a recording without that control is just a file. Once a viewing link circulates, there is no way to know who is actually watching, and no way to charge the next person who wants in. Tying access to the pass instead of the link means the video keeps behaving like a ticketed session even after the room has emptied out — you can still say who gets in, and you can still charge for the privilege.

Why sell recordings after the event

A festival's teaching does not end when the tent comes down. The talks, the kirtan sets, the guided sittings — the material has a life well past the weekend it was recorded in.

Selling access to it does three things at once. It gives the people who attended a reason to stay engaged with what they paid for, instead of the event closing the moment they drive home. It gives people who could not travel a way to buy in anyway, turning a one-time gathering into something with a second audience. And it gives you revenue from work you have already done — the session happened, the camera was already running, and the only remaining step is deciding who gets to watch it.

What ticket holders see when they open the catalogue

Ticket holders find their unlocked sessions in one catalogue for the event. Whatever they have access to, they can play right there.

Sessions they do not have access to are not hidden. They show up in the same catalogue as something that exists but is locked, rather than disappearing from view entirely. That single choice changes what the catalogue is. A locked session that is visible is an offer — a ticket holder can see exactly what they are missing and what buying the recordings pass would get them. A locked session that is invisible would just be a dead end, with no reason for anyone to come back and buy anything at all.

Work out, before the event starts, which passes should open which sessions. A weekend pass covering the days it was sold for, a recordings pass covering everything, whatever mix fits your programme — decide it while you are still setting up sessions, not after the recordings exist and people are already asking for them. Since access follows the pass rather than a link, the mapping you set is what will actually govern who gets in, so it is worth getting right the first time rather than adjusting it under pressure once footage is live and people are waiting to watch.

Does this work for a single-day gathering

Recordings attach to the sessions of an event, so they suit a programme built from distinct talks, workshops or classes rather than one continuous gathering with no internal structure. A day of back-to-back kirtan sets, breathwork sessions, or workshop blocks works exactly the way a multi-day retreat does — each session gets its own recording and its own access rule.

If your event already has a session schedule set up on BrightStar, the recordings hang directly off that schedule. There is no separate structure to build; the sessions you already created are the same sessions the recordings attach to.

Common questions

Can I sell recordings of my BrightStar event afterwards?

Yes. BrightStar's session recordings let you attach video to the sessions of your event and control who can watch it, so a recording can be included with a pass someone already bought or sold as its own product after the gathering ends.

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This works whether the pass a person bought already included the recordings or they buy access separately after the event ends. Because the recording stays tied to what they purchased rather than a link, you can price it as its own product long after the live sessions have finished, without the video circulating outside the people who paid for it.

How is access to a recording controlled?

By what the person bought. On BrightStar, recordings unlock according to the ticket or pass held by the viewer, rather than through a shared link. That means a weekend pass can open the sessions it covered while a separate recordings pass opens the full library, and access cannot be handed on by forwarding a URL.

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This is why a shared link cannot substitute for a real ticket: the video only plays for the pass it is tied to, so someone who receives a forwarded URL still needs their own qualifying pass to watch anything. It also lets you run different tiers side by side — a partial pass for attendees, a full pass for people buying in afterward — without one undercutting the other.

Where do ticket holders find their recordings?

In a single catalogue of the event's sessions. Sessions they have access to play there. Sessions they do not have access to are still shown, so a ticket holder can see what else exists and what it would take to unlock it, rather than the rest of the programme being invisible.

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Seeing the locked sessions matters as much as seeing the unlocked ones, because it turns the catalogue into a menu rather than a wall. A ticket holder scrolling through can tell exactly which recordings their current pass covers and which ones would require buying a recordings pass, which is the moment an upsell actually happens.

Do I need a multi-session event to use recordings?

Recordings attach to the sessions of an event, so they suit programmes with distinct talks, workshops or classes rather than a single continuous gathering. If your event already has a session schedule on BrightStar, the recordings hang off it directly.

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A single continuous gathering with no internal session structure has nothing for the recordings to attach to, since the feature works at the level of individual sessions rather than the event as a whole. If you break a long gathering into named sessions on BrightStar first, even simple ones, recordings can attach to each and the same access rules apply.

Can someone share a recording by forwarding the link?

No. On BrightStar, access to a recording is tied to the pass someone bought rather than to a link, so forwarding a URL does not let another person watch. Whoever wants to view the recording needs their own qualifying pass.

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This is the same protection that makes selling recordings worthwhile in the first place: if a private link could be passed around freely, there would be no way to charge for the recording separately from the live event. Tying playback to the purchase means every viewer is someone who paid, whether that payment happened before the gathering or long after it ended.

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