New Form of Performing: Virtual Concerts in Metaverse
When the COVID-19 pandemic took over and caused everyone to go into lockdown, artists looked for alternative ways to make a living and engage with their fans. Hundreds and thousands of artists held virtual live or pre-recorded concerts over the platforms like Youtube, Zoom, Instagram, and Facebook, but they were far from what we used to experience as a live event.
“The transformation of traditional music performances accelerated”
In the metaverse, creativity is something music industry actors to participate in. As time passed at this new form of living in a post-pandemic world, forward-thinking music industry actors and the developers saw the opportunity to bring live performances into virtual worlds, and the transformation of traditional music performances accelerated. And the outcome was a massive glimpse at how metaverse could shape the future of music performances, which is explained under several topics with the examples below.
New Form of Performing: Virtual Concerts in Metaverse
Virtual concerts can be defined as a musical performance the artist projected onto a virtual stage with synced top re-recorded music. There have been many great examples of this new and innovative form of music consumption in virtual worlds in recent years. One of the most exciting and successful was the Travis Scott performance on Fortnite.
American Rapper and producer Travis Scott teamed up with Epic Games and held a virtual concert in metaverse-like open World game Fortnite in April 2020 to promote his new album “Astroworld.” The entire world of Fortnite turned into a stage for a 15-minute performance. Travis Scott appeared with a motion-captured 3-D version during the concert. When the tracks changed, the visuals and appearance of the artist and users changed too. Over 27.7 million unique players participated during the virtual concert, and the players were able to dance, walk around to stage, and see the artist from a different point of view.
Production of the virtual concerts
Planning virtual concerts requires digital artists, developers, creative technologists, and performance capture experts to team up to build all of the virtual environments, create the artists' avatar, the choreography, and the visual story.
An essential part of the design of virtual concerts is the performer's appearance. Performers need to be modeled from scratch through the motion-capture technology. Recorded by several cameras surrounding the performer, sensors placed on each section of the body helps to detect every gesture and movement. Recorded sensor information is used to create a 3D model and animated version of the performer, which will later be synced with the audio recording.
Afterward, the digital version of the performer needs to be placed in a 3D environment, which can also be designed and customized according to the concept of the performance
Platforms That Designs Virtual Concerts
Since designing and creating a virtual concert experience requires many technological infrastructure and specialists, several platforms offer their services to create these experiences for the artists.
Wave
Wave is a virtual concert production company and platform. The company’s mission is to create a virtual world and design virtual concerts for musicians to meet with larger audiences and sell NFTs directly to their fans. Wave offers different tiers for musicians based on their budgets. In April 2021, the company announced a partnership with Warner Music group and Roc Nation to produce virtual interactive concerts for their artist rosters. The company hosted more than 50 virtual events for artists and DJs, such as Justin Bieber, Tinashe, Imogen Heap. And the company is open to collaborating with more musicians looking to create virtual concerts.
Stage 11
French startup company Stage 11 creates virtual cinematic music performances for the artists to engage with their fans and feature NTF collectibles. Assembled a team of artists, writers and engineers work to envision and outline the digital performance. The startup has raised a €5m funding and announced partnership with artists such as Snoop Dogg, Akon, Salif Gueye to create immersive virtual concerts in the metaverse.
Xyris
Established in 2015, the Interactive design company Xyris is another company that designs 360-degree experiential virtual performances in virtual spaces. The company also provides objective data on attendance, location, and participation of the event.