“Innovate or Antiquate” Does This Apply to Live Audience Interaction?
The music industry has been turned upside down and sideways in recent years by innovations stretching far beyond anything anticipated. Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services have revolutionized the way consumers discover, listen to and buy music. These services are also revolutionizing the way that artist build and sustain audience interaction. Ticketmaster is fighting ticket scalping with their “Verified Fan” platform. VR (virtual reality) discussions and experiments are heating up.
But what about the live show? Where’s the innovation in live performance, and how do we assess it’s value? Audiences now carry 45X more technology into shows (i.e. smartphones) than anything we’re putting on stage. So, I’ll look at audience tech in the form of LED bracelets and then look at why and how it creates and environment of powerful interactivity in the live experience.
Does the Live Experience Really Change with New Audience Tech?
Currently there is a notion in the business world that if you aren’t innovating then you are quickly going to be left in the shadows. Somewhat surprisingly, this maxim also applies in the realm of music fan engagement. Legacy acts will always have a relationship with a core fanbase, but audiences are now incredibly fickle, competition is fierce and the pace of innovation is accelerating. How is your interaction with fans changing this year? This month? This week? Today?
Pearl Jam has been selling out stadiums since their 1991 debut album, Ten. However, the biggest noticeable change over the years is, arguably, their sponsors. Why should Pearl Jam worry about audience tech and fan engagement when they’ve been vastly successful for so long?

Posted by: I’M A DRIFTER… Monday, May 3, 2010, on Blogger
Coldplay, on the other hand has been crafting musical masterpieces of their own since 2000 and have adopted various innovations over the years. Coldplay concerts are noted for beautiful uses of color, lights, fireworks, confetti, lasers, and fog. Since 2012, Coldplay has engaged the audience of their performances with LED wristbands. Despite initially costing the band over $600k per performance (the price has come down in recent years), they looked for ways to keep this engagement going because it reportedly gave them a strong connection and interaction with their live audience.

Balloons filled the entire Rose Bowl. Photos by: Steve Jennings
New Tech, Old School Analysis
So, what’s the point of new audience tech, like LED wearables, in shows? What do they accomplish and how do we assess their total impact? Are they just really cool spectacle? Or do they do more?
Taking a quick deep dive back into the history of performance criticism, we find some helpful analysis in Aristotle’s Poetics. In the Poetics, Aristotle discusses six elements of performance: plot, character, thought, diction, melody (or song), and spectacle.
The spectacle value of a 360° illuminated audience is, well, spectacular. But Aristotle says that spectacle is the least important element of a performance. It’s a contribution of the stage mechanist than the performing artist. However, if you look at the way that Coldplay used bracelets, they contributed much more than merely spectacle value.
The brilliant neon colors synchronized to the music conveyed an essential aspect of the band’s character. Coldplay works very hard to portray themselves as vibrant, energetic, engaging and inclusive. The 2012 use of bracelets was their coup d’etat of staging that essential Coldplay character.
What about Aristotle’s other elements of performance in relation to LED bracelets? Thought is really difficult to convey with audience-wide light and color. But skilled lighting directors do support the “spine” or theme of the show, building anticipation with light and shadow, signaling transitions with color and gobo effects.
The iconic combination of light and staging in Pink Floyd triangular prism has yielded quite a bit of speculation concerning the meaning or thought behind the prism. On tour, Pink Floyd’s triangular prism was constructed so that it would appear as broad laser waves that transformed into the prism structure revealed during “Eclipse.” While this is not “plot” in the way we normally think of it, it definitely traces a distinct arc of development in the concert narrative.

Designed by: Marc Brickman / Laser Effects Produced by: Lightwave International
Taylor Swift’s 1989 tour began with a similar type of “reveal,” this time with LED bracelets. Beginning in relative darkness, at a visible signal from Taylor, the audience’s bracelets were illuminated (and kept glowing for most of the show). This is an incredibly powerful way to show the audience that they are not an afterthought to the performance. They are literally the beginning — or as Taylor frequently includes in fan messaging, the reason why she is Taylor Swift.
Sophisticated live audience interaction design understands that just as everyday conversations are sculpted by both words and moments of silence, the performance itself is shaped by silence that anticipates sound, darkness that anticipates revelation, clear gestures of invitation that wait for the response. This is diction.
Clearly forming and communicating a performance’s vocabulary of interaction will determine whether or not the performance is muddled and whether or not your audience comes away with the sense that they have a deeper understanding and relationship with the artist.
Conclusion
So, why should you value existing and emerging live audience tech, because it is a new medium — a very powerful medium that impacts the thought, character, diction, melodic support and spectacle of a show.
At Nymbus we think that bracelets are the gateway to interacting with fans through the ubiquitous computing that is impacting every aspect of the music industry. Every artist’s career begins by building relationships with fans. That will never change. But just as the household piano changed music publishing, discovery and engagement in the early 19th Century, engaging fans is an evolving art. Often it’s an art of meeting fans, shaking hands and engaging with them through the tools that they use to craft their own narratives. Right now the most significant tool of personal narrative creation is the smartphone.
I know what you’re thinking. “Personal narratives are created on social media.” I disagree. They are published on social media, and that media builds relationships with the companies that own it. Crafting an live concert interaction narrative that builds relationship with fans will always demand a unique set of tech tools. But that’s an argument for another post.
Sources:
Aristotle, Translated by S. H. Butcher. “Poetics.” The Internet Classics Archive. 350 B.C.E. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html
Forman, Alannah. “13 Music Artists Experimenting With VR Video.” VRScout. June 23, 2016. https://vrscout.com/news/360-vr-music-videos-and-artists/#
Leonie, Cooper. “Coldplay spent £4.22 million on colour changing ‘Mylo Xyloto’ tour wristbands.” NME. December 14, 2013. http://www.nme.com/news/music/coldplay-169-1238257
Smith, Nicola. “How virtual reality is shaking up the music industry.” BBC News. January 31, 2017. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-38795190
Originally published at blog.nymbusmedia.com.
