HTC Takes On Virtual Concerts with Beatday Event

The Taiwanese firm aims to blend live performances with the Metaverse to revive the post-COVID music industry

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Published: September 1, 2021

Demond Cureton

Taiwanese tech firm HTC VIVE is set to tackle the crisis in the music and performance industries by backing technologies for holographic concerts, Variety Magazine found in an interview on Wednesday.

Concerts have been deeply hit by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, where both small and globally-renowned performers have faced blockages due to national lockdown restrictions and further outbreaks.

Speaking to the Taoyuan City-based firm, Variety found HTC VIVE plans to launch a beta verions of its Beatday platform, which facilitates virtual concerts with multiple cameras and a global audience reach.

Beatday has been promoted as “a metaverse with music as its main focus”, HTC Vive told Variety.

The platform creates a virtual performance space for artists, where set designers and lighting teams have the full capability to shape the stage as desired.

Motion capture studios later record performances with volumetric (3D) cameras at motion caption studios in Japan, Taiwan, and France, among others.

Attendees can also buy virtual merchandise, as non-fungible tokens, for holographic content or real memorabilia from the artist’s store.

Liu Szu-Ming, HTC VIVE President, told Variety,

“We will launch Beatday first on both mobile and PC in order to attract the mass public and to be available to younger users. After we reach a certain scale in the market, we will then release a VR version to really provide the high-end experience for our audiences”

Amazing Show, a Taiwanese indie band, will perform for half an hour in a beta test run closed to the public, but HTC VIVE hopes to gain up to four additional performers by the end of 2021.

Liu continued, stating he believed performers would be attracted to Beatday as it was “creating significant change to the industry” by integrating music licencing, artist management agencies, record labels, and new business opportunities.

He concluded: “After singers’ physical concerts were canceled due to the pandemic, ‘holo concerts’ have emerged as the new way of putting on shows online.”

Tickets could cost $10 USD to $20 USD, which may include concert entry and NFT-backed, custom avatar as a souvenir.

The news comes after the Splendour XR festival opened a mixed reality (MR) event to audiences in July this year, where attendees could dance, meet people from across the world, and buy NFT merchandise.

Artists performing on the new Metaverse platform included The Killers, Chvrches, Grimes, Charli XCX, and Khalid, among many others.

 

 

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