Live Concerts and VR: Can I Sing-Along With My Favorite Lyrics From My Living Room?

Every year, as soon as summer approached, I was getting into a state of tense anticipation. All I was thinking about was the live concerts that I had the opportunity to attend. Concert venues were becoming my second home during that period.

Then suddenly, a deadly virus got out of hand and everyone had to stay at home isolated.

(The Iron Maiden live concert in July 2018, in Rockwave Festival, where more than 40 thousand people attended )

Soon after, one concert after another was canceled. It was impossible to organize concerts with thousands of people standing next to each other, singing at the top of their lungs.

For the music industry to stay alive, new formats were required so that artists could stay active and at the same time, offer humanity an extra form of entertainment now that everyone was isolated at home.

During the first months of the quarantine, artists found new ways to interact with their audience and keep an active presence. Therefore, many of them performed live sessions on Zoom and Instagram.

Then, in June of 2020, Jean-Michel Jarre, announced a virtual concert, that was scheduled to stream on a global scale. The concert drew hundreds of thousands of views across virtual reality streaming and on YouTube.

In April 2021, more than 27 million people attended a live event of the famous game “Fortnite”, where players used their avatars to dance and explore a custom-designed psychedelic world, while Travis Scott performed live, depicted in a colossal figure.

(The avatar of a user in front of Travis Scott’s colossal avatar)

After that, various famous artists performed VR concerts, including The Weeknd and Billie Ellish, which also gathered millions of viewers.

Even though VR concerts managed to attract such massive audiences, only the future can say if they are here to stay. The more people attend VR concerts, the more they grow and increase their value, hence the more the chances of them becoming permanent (Network Effect).