On Wednesday of this week, I attended my first Bryan Adams live concert in Copenhagen. Sitting at Royal Arena, with an approximate audience around 20k, the concert was another level of experience and I couldn't keep calm! A gush of emotions and nostalgia from decades swept through the concert.
Before Bryan Adams took the stage, the giant backstage screen was displaying a QR code. Fans could scan and request their favorite songs to be sung on the evening. A series of interesting questions floated through my mind and I went on to dig deeper into this topic to find a huge marketing opportunity afterwards. WebAR can eventually make events and concerts more popular and viral while launching a new marketing trend for music industry. Let's dive today with music this Saturday.
Music Events and Global Market Stats
Taylor Swift made a headline and a record with the Eras Tour, making a hopping revenue of $1.04 billion, with 4.35 million tickets sold across 60 tour dates. Revenue in the Music Events market is projected to reach $34.23bn in 2024. The post covid music event depression stage is now over and performers are looking new ways to engage audience at live events. As a matter of fact, the industry revenue has almost doubled now, if you compare it to pre-covid stage revenue cycles.
But there is a catch. Most of such events still hold the old world approach of live events and concerts. A vast majority of the audience often have difficulties in watching their favorite stars from a distance in those events. The pre and post event engagement marketing strategies are not so strong yet. When someone is paying a huge sum for an event, most likely something as a souvenir, associated with the show, can make things memorable for the life.
What's New in Music Industry Marketing?
When it comes to marketing and product merchandising within music industry, nobody can beat Metallica. Their geniusness has established a whole new line of service for their fanbase. From t-shirt to baseball cap, you can find them selling a large array of products with Metallica branding. Do you know that Metallica owns a whiskey brand named Blackened, which launched in 2018?
They truly have the spirit to experiment with new things. In 2021, Universal Music launched an AR Instagram filter for Metallica (see here). Artists and singers like Eminem, Drake, Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift and many others have already launched some sort of AR based interactivity platforms for their fanbase. Most often fans can use camera during the concerts and gain some mindblowing experiences.
Big music festivals like Coachella partnered with Unreal Engine, a 3D computer graphics game engine, to create a YouTube livestream enriched with eccentric 3D visuals floating around the stage.
Snapchat announced a partnership with Live Nation to launch a series of AR experiences at selected festivals and concerts.
Explore the Opportunity with WebAR
You may not start working with Lady Gaga or Miley Cyrus on the day one. But this billion dollar industry is filled with numerious top and mid tier artists and bands who often go live in music events. For example, Denmark's Roskilde Festival is one of the largest music festival across Europe and for 2024, almost 254 bands and performers have registered for the event. Lots of them have quite a moderate fanbase. Now a days, product merchandising like selling branded t-shirt, coffee mugs, baseball caps and associated stuffs to fanbase is a common strategy of marketing.
You can collaborate with the music event performers and elevate their marketing standards to the next level. Finding a way to engage with fanbase, outside the events, is always a challenge, especially within a crowded and saturated media usage. Web based AR, in this case, can bring a great leverage to maximize the distribution and engagement opportunity. People do not need to restrict themselve towards a certain app or social media filter. Anyone can scan a QR and engage with a virtual presence of their favorite artists immediately or can take a peak from their latest performance.
Apart from product merchandising, tickets to such music events can also be made memorable using WebAR. Add a punch of creativity and offer the same ticket to the audience but now it can become a lifetime souvenir for the fan. With more creativity, the favorite artist can appear in a large sacle during the event, via the camera of the fan and people can take pictures of it. You get the idea by now!
AR and VR are moving fast inside the music industry. For external events, I believe AR will remain a more favorable approach for people to explore and enjoy. WebAR will certainly mark a quintessential position to be explored by mass audience, in a customized format, quickly being modified if necessary, in between one show to the next, providing an ever lasting impact on the user mind and build a stronger base than ever. In coming years, we'll see more artists and bands focusing on this side of virtual engagement to maximize their potential.