In the last year and a half, virtual concerts have become a staple of the music industry, and, whether you like them or not, they’re probably here to stay. Before COVID-19, the modern world had been trending digital for a long time. In many ways, doing things online is more accessible for all involved. While a virtual concert might not have the thrill of a live concert, it has the advantage of being international and, theoretically, unlimited in viewership.
Live concerts certainly aren’t in danger any time soon, but now that audiences have begun to embrace this new market, artists are beginning to explore the boundaries of what can be done in the digital space.
Enter Deadmau5
Deadmau5 is an EDM legend with his record label (Mau5trap) and millions of listeners on Spotify. He’s an icon of the genre whose progressive house sound has earned him six Grammy Award nominations. Now he’s looking to be one of the first artists to explore the full range of possibilities in this burgeoning online market with his latest project: Oberhasli.
Oberhasli is a virtual, interactive environment for staging concerts, built in the game Core.
What is Core?
Well, the ‘Core’ concept is quite familiar for anyone who ever played Roblox. Built to encourage UGC (user-generated content), Core is one game that dabbles with being a game engine.
You can’t export your games as stand-alone works, and you can’t import your models, but, as with Roblox before it, Core offers users the ability to include their code with the Lua programming language. As a result, it’s a surprisingly versatile structure for building your content and an exciting development on the Roblox formula.
As it happens, this isn’t Deadmau5’s first foray into the gaming world. His track “Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff” has appeared in Just Dance and FUSER, while he is available as a player character in DJ Hero 2, Goat Simulator, and Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff. That being said, this is his first attempt to bring live music and gaming together. So could this be the beginning of a whole new kind of online concert?
There’s no doubt that the current boom in virtual concerts directly results from the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic, it was almost unthinkable that virtual concerts would make up such a massive part of the industry, but as with so many things, Covid has shown us how well concerts can work online.
However, virtual concerts have mostly been done out of necessity until now. They are a replacement for traditional concerts rather than an alternative. Oberhasli, on the other hand, could well represent the start of a new market. Of course, it’s too early to say for sure. Still, by playing to the strengths of the online medium and utilizing the interactive elements of games in a way that face-to-face concerts never could, Oberhasli’s innovative approach may set the template for all virtual concerts in years to come.
The music industry has been tied to technology for decades now. However, ever since the invention of sound recording, artists have been finding new ways to make and perform music. It’s almost impossible to predict which way technology will go. Twenty years ago, most people were still using physical media. We bought CDs and DVDs, and you only had what you owned. Now you can listen to practically whatever you want through one handy subscription.
Ultimately, there are advantages and disadvantages to any new technology, and only time will tell how the market responds to these new ideas.
