GIGS: Mercury Studios' Live Music Channel on Samsung TV Plus and Freeview
GIGS is a free, advertising-supported streaming television channel devoted to live music. It is operated by Mercury Studios, the audiovisual content studio of Universal Music Group, and it draws on one of the deepest catalogues of concert films and music documentaries in the world. In the United Kingdom, where the channel is listed from London, GIGS began as an exclusive service for Samsung TV Plus before expanding onto Freeview, where it sits on channel 284.
The idea behind the channel is simple: instead of short music videos, GIGS offers the full concert experience — complete live performances, festival sets and long-form documentaries about the artists who made them — organised as a traditional linear channel that viewers can simply switch on and leave running.
Overview
GIGS belongs to the FAST category of television: free ad-supported streaming TV. There is no subscription, no account and no fee; the channel is funded by advertising and delivered over the internet to smart televisions and connected devices. Its schedule mixes headline concert films with music documentaries drawn from across Universal Music Group's audiovisual catalogue.
Artists named in the channel's launch publicity give a clear picture of its flavour: The Cure, Def Leppard, The Police and The Rolling Stones, with featured episodes of the acclaimed series Live From Abbey Road also forming part of the line-up.
History and Launch
GIGS was announced in February 2024, when Mercury Studios partnered with Samsung TV Plus to launch the channel exclusively, at first, for Samsung users in the UK. The launch was celebrated later that month, on 28 February 2024, with an event at Samsung KX, Samsung's experience store at Coal Drops Yard in London, which included a special live performance by the R&B quartet No Guidnce.
The channel's second phase came in the autumn of the same year. In October 2024 GIGS joined Freeview as a streaming channel on channel 284, as part of a monthly Freeview update that also added other new services. That move took the channel beyond Samsung hardware and made it available to the much wider audience of Freeview viewers with internet-connected sets.
Ownership and Operator
GIGS is a Mercury Studios channel. Mercury Studios was formed by Universal Music Group in December 2020, in London, as a multi-faceted content studio for music-based storytelling across film, television and other formats. It absorbed Eagle Rock Entertainment, the long-established producer of concert films and music documentaries, whose library of nearly 2,000 hours of programming and more than 800 original documentary titles became the backbone of the new studio's catalogue.
Mercury Studios is led by chief executive Alice Webb, who had run Eagle Rock before the reorganisation and previously spent fifteen years at the BBC. That inheritance matters for GIGS: the channel is effectively a shop window for a catalogue built over decades of filming live music, now repurposed for the streaming era under Universal Music Group's ownership.
Programming and Schedule
The schedule is built from two main ingredients. The first is full-length live performance: concert films of major rock and pop acts, many of them restored classics from the Eagle Rock archive, covering performances by artists such as The Rolling Stones, The Doors and ZZ Top alongside the acts highlighted at launch. The second is documentary programming, including artist profiles and series such as Live From Abbey Road, which records artists performing and talking inside the famous London studios.
Because GIGS is a linear channel, viewers do not choose titles from a menu; they join whatever performance is under way. That curated, lean-back format is deliberate. Mercury Studios has presented the channel as a way to let audiences rediscover long-form music programming in the style of traditional television, but delivered through modern streaming platforms.
Availability and Platforms
GIGS launched exclusively on Samsung TV Plus in the UK. Samsung's free service is available on Samsung smart TVs from 2016 onwards and on Galaxy smartphones and tablets, and carries well over a hundred free channels. On that platform GIGS sits within the music section of the guide.
Since October 2024 the channel has also been available on Freeview channel 284. As with other Freeview streaming channels, viewers need a compatible television or box connected to the internet; the channel is delivered by broadband rather than by the aerial signal alone. Mercury Studios' own video channels also promote GIGS to Freeview viewers across the UK, underlining that the channel is now a general UK service rather than a single-platform exclusive.
Audience and Market
GIGS is aimed at music fans who grew up with concert films and music television but now watch through smart TVs. Its catalogue leans towards classic rock, pop and heritage acts with large, loyal fanbases, the kind of repertoire that suits long, relaxed viewing sessions rather than short clips on a phone.
For Universal Music Group, the channel also has a strategic role. Record companies hold vast archives of filmed performances whose value used to be realised through DVD sales and occasional broadcasts. A dedicated FAST channel turns that archive into a continuously available, advertising-funded asset, and introduces younger streaming audiences to catalogue artists at no cost to the viewer.
Sister Services
GIGS has no traditional sister channel in the way a broadcast network might, but it sits within a family of Mercury Studios outlets for the same catalogue. Mercury's concert and documentary library is also licensed to other streaming services, and the studio's output appears on broadcasters and platforms around the world, from documentaries made for the BBC and Netflix to live films released through its own channels.
On Samsung TV Plus, GIGS sits alongside other music services such as the Vevo channels, Trace and Qwest TV, forming part of a music block within the platform's guide. Within the Mercury Studios business, GIGS functions as the dedicated linear outlet, complementing the studio's on-demand and theatrical releases.
Notable Programmes and People
Live From Abbey Road is the channel's most prestigious series name, bringing performances recorded at Abbey Road Studios — itself owned by Universal Music Group — to the schedule. Mercury Studios acquired the rights to distribute the series and has promoted it as a centrepiece of the catalogue available through GIGS.
Behind the channel, Alice Webb, Mercury Studios' chief executive, was the public face of the launch, presenting GIGS as the studio's entry into FAST television. At Samsung, Jenn Batty, the European head of content acquisitions for Samsung TV Plus, fronted the platform side of the partnership. The launch performance by No Guidnce, a contemporary R&B group, was chosen to show that the catalogue stretches beyond heritage rock to current artists.
Recent Developments
The defining recent development for GIGS was its expansion from Samsung exclusivity onto Freeview in October 2024, which converted it from a platform showcase into a broadly available UK channel. Mercury Studios signalled at launch that it would publish information about the channel's future availability around the world, indicating that the UK service is intended as the first step in a wider international rollout of the format.
The channel's trajectory mirrors the development of FAST television in Britain more generally. Services that began as extras inside one manufacturer's smart-TV platform have steadily migrated onto Freeview's streamed channel range, where they sit in the same programme guide as the traditional broadcasters. GIGS made that journey within its first year, and it did so with a catalogue that few rival music services could match, because its owner also owns the studio that filmed many of the performances in the first place.
The channel also benefits from Mercury Studios' continuing production slate. The studio remains active in music documentaries and live films, and each new title strengthens the library from which GIGS programmes its schedule, keeping the channel closely tied to the wider Universal Music Group catalogue.
