Watch Thomas Dolby Performing in High Fidelity and Decide if Social VR is the Future of Live Online Music

Notwithstanding some technical difficulties here and there, and occasional herky-jerky movement from his avatar, this is pretty impressive and mind-bending: Coming in live from his studio at Johns Hopkins in Maryland to High Fidelity's servers in San Francisco, in front of an audience of 200 or so avatars, here's pop star Thomas Dolby rigged to a full body VR rig, performing live in the virtual world last weekend. While he does his hit "Hyperactive" in this long clip (toward the end), he doesn't do "She Blinded Me With Science". However, High Fidelity's Ryan Downe does get the entire audience to shout "SCIENCE!" at the same time -- which in itself demonstrates how real time and low latency High Fidelity's technical performance is. (You can even hear a lot of audience chatter in the background, just as you would if you saw Dolby at a real world club venue.)

Back in 2006 when Suzanne Vega performed live in Second life in front of some 80 people, many people (i.e. me) were prompted to wonder if virtual world performances were the future of live music online. Clearly it was too early to ask that question back then -- during Vega's show, the system groaned to handle that many audience members -- but now, finally, is a good time to raise that topic again:

After all, concert performances remain the core revenue source for professional musicians (even moreso in this era of streaming services, which utterly short shrift artists), but the costs of shipping, traveling, and stage management are huge. Thomas Dolby was doing this particular show for free, but just imagine if those 200 audience members paid, say, $20 each to experience Dolby in an immersive setting, plus any virtual merch they bought after the show. They'd get as good an experience if they saw the musician perform in person for many times that ticket price -- and the musician would gross $4000 for a few hours of work from the comfort of their own studio.

Comments

[Thomas Dolby]

Yeah, it believe me, it is many magnitudes more stressful doing it virtually! This performance took years off my life! TD

[JohnC]

Take away the low grade graphics and you have little more than a radio broadcast.

[Thomas Dolby]

Now, steady on JohnC. As you know, Moore's Law will take care of the graphic issue within a few years. But a radio broadcast is one-to-many. This is many-to-many, as you could turn and have a conversation with your neighbor and agree to move to a different spot. Or heckle the performer (as happened!) and get a personal response. Or if you get bored, decide to teleport to a different stage, or to a game/educational/sex environment; or build your own world and perform yourself.