How VR will kill your FOMO (and you’ll become BFF with Harry Styles)
- Cortney Harding works in between music and VR — and explains how VR will fuel fandom and finish off FOMO.
- “The music industry is one which deals with young, obsessive fans… and in VR that’s where it gets kind of interesting, and kind of weird.”
- If you could share regular, intimate, one-on-one experiences with your favourite star, would your real friends seem boring?
The music business has long conflated reality and fantasy in order to make money. And whether it’s sold the story of the dreamboat boyband member, the innocent/sexy pop star, or the wasted rebel-rocker, audiences in their billions, seeking escape, have lapped it up.
So if VR is about creating environments that feel “real”, what happens when technology that blurs intimacy, trust and reality meets the most determined and infatuated tween fan?
This is where Cortney Harding — professor, author, and consultant working at the intersection of music and virtual reality — comes in. To understand her interest, ask yourself this: could you resist the chance of time alone with a virtual, believable David Bowie? No, us neither.
Cortney will speak on the morality and reality of these VR experiences at TOA Berlin 2017 (Earlybird Tickets are available, but not for long!)
In advance of what promises to be a fascinating talk, we spoke to Cortney and she told us about virtual pop stars, why being “virtually ignored” feels awful, and how a gig in VR must be unlike any show you have ever been to in your life…
TOA.life: An artist’s success relies on the strength of the connection between them and their fans. What difference will connecting with a pop star in VR make?
Cortney Harding: “The music industry is one which often deals with young, obsessive fans who pay a hundred dollars for a concert ticket.
“In the 60s if you loved The Beatles, you’d watch them on TV or read about them in a magazine — and that was about it. Now, pop stars are on social media all the time, and you really feel a sense of “I know who this person is” — even though, of course, you don’t.
“So VR brings an even deeper sense of intimacy: you can create experiences where stars talk ‘directly’ to you, and it really feels like you are the only two people there. And for pop stars that’s great, because they can create a deeper bond.
“VR is great for history lessons: here’s George Washington talking about being the first president.
“But while it’s easy to understand that George Washington is not actually there, alive and talking to you; some young, obsessive fans could think they’re actually friends with One Direction. And with VR, that’s where it gets both kind of interesting, and kind of weird.”
What does VR mean for a music industry geared to making money from exclusive, mustn’t-miss, live performances? Won’t it stop people from concert-going?
CH: “No — if you can recreate experiences, it’s the end of FOMO. As an analogy: Baseball teams don’t think that they’re losing an audience by showing games on TV.
“There are a lot of people who are in their forties — with jobs and kids and lives — and they can’t go out to rock shows every night. But they still love music and they want to be part of it — and that’s a huge audience for VR.
“Or, as it’s more and more expensive to buy tickets for a concert, why wouldn’t you pop on a VR headset to check out a band and see what they’re like live? If they’re great, you’ll buy a ticket to their next show.
“There’s also a huge audience of people who live outside of major markets where bands don’t tour — but who would like to experience a concert. So VR is going to broaden an artist’s audience too.”
Will VR performances grab these audiences in a similar way to a real live show? Will you be able to put on a VR headset and feel like you’re “there?”
CH: “It will be a very long time before you can really approximate the feeling of actually being at a concert. The thing with live VR right now is that you can’t control where you “are”, but people want to virtually move around — at a real show, you don’t stay in fixed positions.
“So in VR in the future, you’re going to be able to watch a song from the side of the stage, and then try a different angle from the crowd.
“If you’re watching a recorded show people will want to skip songs — every band has that song people don’t like. And that’s useful data for bands: they can drop that song from their set because everyone hates it!
So do you think it needs someone like Katy Perry for instance with huge numbers of fans, and for her to say: “I’m shooting this concert in 360º VR and you don’t want to miss out!”?
CH: “VR is still so new. For a lot of people VR still feels kind of strange. There’s going to need to be a lot of moments where big stars or big brands do something with VR.
“Some bands have done really good things with VR, like Run The Jewels. The way you get people into it is by making VR really fun and accessible and not a scary, expensive thing. But it’s tough, because like no one wants to be first — everyone wants to be second!
“Last year was supposed to be the year that VR broke but it didn’t. There’s a chicken-and-egg problem where there’s just not enough good content out there yet — but why bother making it if there is low demand for the content? We need some big early adopters just kind of go in, and then the floodgates will open.”
Ultimately, if VR, AR, and 360º video becomes successful, does that mean that everyone — from artists, to producers, to stage designers — need to think totally differently about what a “live performance” is?
CH: “Yes. VR is going to change the way that people consume entertainment. One of the things that I’ve noticed about early live shows in VR is that the cameras are just sort of there, and artists don’t acknowledge them.
“Here’s a simple example: the new Fifty Shades Darker movie has a 360º trailer where you’re at a masquerade ball. Initially, I just watched people walk by, and my impression was, ‘wow, I’m at this event — and I’m the awkward loser in the corner that everyone is ignoring!’“
“Then someone comes and talks directly to you and I thought, “oh now this is cool.” And that’s the thing — people don’t want to be passive observers. You don’t want to feel like you’re being ignored. You want to feel like someone is addressing you or at least acknowledge you.
“Just putting a band in a room and filming it in 360º — I would rather virtually watch grass grow! You need to approximate the energy of a show. We will need to move in a direction where artists acknowledge that you — the viewer — exists.”
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Cortney is speaking at TOA Berlin 2017.
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