Concerts in the Metaverse on the rise

Will we go to concerts in the metaverse in future? One thing is certain: Unity wants the music metaverse: The world's biggest EDM festival and many concerts are also to take place in virtual reality. In Switzerland, the Zurich rapper Didi recently made his Swiss debut.

Before the pandemic, the Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) attracted up to 525,000 visitors to Las Vegas every year. Organiser Insomniac Events is now also working on virtual versions of the festival and numerous concerts. The use of virtual reality, augmented reality and other immersive technologies is planned.

The cooperation partner is Unity Technologies. The events are to become immersive and interactive. When the virus threw the event industry into chaos, talks accelerated rapidly, says former Xbox boss and current senior vice president of sports and live entertainment at Unity, Peter Moore, in an interview with VentureBeat. He calls the new event project a metaverse that revolves entirely around music.

What is meant is a persistent virtual world built by Insomniac Events in which numerous smaller digital worlds are interconnected. The vision thus resembles models such as those in the novels Ready Player One or Snow Crash. How closely the set designs will resemble their models is still unknown.

Old competition and new target groups

Perhaps this will enable the company to tap into new target groups who have not been able to visit real festival highlights so far. Weekend tickets for this year's EDC in Las Vegas cost at least 359 dollars.

Competitor Wave gave up its VR ambitions in January 2021, even before the service could come to Europe from the USA. After the market expectations were not fulfilled, the start-up invested more in live streams of virtual concerts - without VR glasses and interactivity.

Incidentally, Unity is already the basis of a "music metaverse": the successful social app VR Chat is built on the Unity Engine, and live shows and DJ sets are also regularly held in it.

Zürcher as the first artist in the Metaverse

The digital agency Software Brauerei AG has already been organising concerts at the Metaverse for a few weeks. In cooperation with Sony Music Switzerland, there was also the first performance by a Swiss artist. The talk is of the Zurich rapper Didi.

Florian Müller, co-founder of the agency, is curious to see whether Switzerland is ready for a Metaverse concert: "Basically, I have the feeling that Switzerland has a great affinity for digitalisation. I actually assume that it is ready for a Metaverse concert. But I think it is also a question of the target group.

The target group for the new concept is primarily young people, Müller continues. When asked what the difference is between a Metaverse concert and a concert via Youtube live stream, he answers: "The interaction. I have my avatar with whom I can clap, cheer and dance. The artist who is performing sees what is happening in the room and can react to it. This creates an interaction that doesn't exist in a normal stream. It gives a completely different experience."

Source: Mixed / argoviatoday