To those that have been paying attention to immersive music experience startup Wave, the recent announcement that they are sunsetting their VR app on Steam should not come as a surprise:
The startup, originally known as TheWaveVR, had increasingly started to focus on immersive experiences that don’t require VR. The VR was replaced in their URL and social media handles by XR, which typically denotes mixed reality although it’s also used for ‘extended reality’ or ‘cross-reality’.
Will Wave still let online music subcultures thrive, as I wrote in 2017? They have and they will. Wave’s co-founder, Adam Arrigo, rightly remarks that artists need audiences to thrive and VR hadn’t taken off in the way they’d hoped. Startups being startups, tough choices have to be made and being spread too thin while juggling different priorities and audiences kills startups. For Wave, that meant getting out of VR (for now) despite growth in the space.
Steam, the world’s online largest gaming store & platform, just reported that 2020 saw 71% more VR revenue compared to 2019. A large portion of which can be attributed to a single game called Half Life: Alyx (39% to be exact). However, some of that revenue can be attributed to Beat Saber, a game that combines music & VR, which has been called “the closest thing VR has seen yet to a ‘killer app’“.
In other news, Bootshaus, a well-known club in Germany, ‘re-launched’ itself as a virtual reality version of its real-life location and has been hosting events since November. These types of developments are interesting, because of the challenges they knowingly or unknowingly take on.
Only ~2% of Steam’s users use a VR headset. That’s a gaming platform. What do these numbers look like for a club and their own audience?
Clubs are experts in targeting local audiences: how do you promote on a global scale (or at least across adjacent timezones) as you inevitably have to branch out beyond your usual audience?
People know what a club night is, so the promotion of one is straight forward. Selling them a new experience requires some form of consumer education and relies on different promotional techniques and strategies.
The way people socially coordinate to attend events in real life is different from the decision-making process to attend an online event.
Image: Bootshaus VR.
And that’s not even considering the technical challenges and aspects of user experience design. This is exactly why it’s unreasonable to expect clubs to “reinvent themselves” for the duration of the pandemic – it’s a different business. It’s why government support is so important.
Having said that, those that do manage to translate their experience and expertise into the virtual realm are important to watch. We spend much more of our time online than before. Just look at the jump in Steam’s data delivery in 2020:
Image: Steam
The pandemic has a lot to do with the jump above, but one should not be too quick to dismiss the new habits that are being established. As Theodore Krantz, the CEO mobile data and analytics company App Annie, recently said:
“The world has forever changed. While people stay at home across the world, we saw mobile habits accelerate by three years.”
Trends is exactly the right word. We may see a dip as we leave the pandemic, but the trend will catch up again. Every live music company, whether a venue or promoter, is already a media company with its channels on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and perhaps TikTok.
What type of media company will venues become now that the virtual experience is mainstream?
Forget the usual suspects: venture capital firm BITKRAFT is easily one of the most interesting funds to watch in the entertainment space. Since the start of June, they have participated in 5 funding rounds totalling over $44 million into companies pioneering possible futures for digital media.
With music mostly detached from its “real world” context of live gigs, it has become obvious that music’s virtual context of livestreams, virtual events, and online communities is set to shape tastes, genres and experiences. Professionals from across the industry, from labels to studios to artists, are increasingly involved in virtual aspects of our culture. Two recent examples:
So what do BITKRAFT’s recent investees enable? A look at 3.
Koji
Co-founded by Dmitry Shapiro, who previously founded Veoh and served as CTO of MySpace Music, Koji is a tool that makes it easy to remix posts for social media.
The posts are shareable and interactive, allowing people to remix them using content from various platforms, so Koji sees them more like “mini-apps“:
“If you’ve experienced WeChat Mini Programs, Kojis are the cross-platform, standards-based, modern versions of that.”
What appears to be the strategy, is for other platforms to allow these interactive forms of media inside of them, similar to how most social media platforms now have Giphy integrations to bring GIFs from the Giphy platform into your favourite social network.
So that sets it apart from other remix platforms, like TikTok or audiovisual mashup platform Coub which emphasise the on-platform experience. Unlike TikTok, Coub is not a walled garden, but most of the activity related to the platform seems to be happening in the garden regardless.
What does it mean for music?
Remix culture has gone through multiple iterations and isn’t done yet. Since the start of the digital era, we’ve seen these important steps for music’s remix culture:
Anyone with a computer being able to acquire (through piracy or a purchase) music production software at reasonable costs and distributing their creations through networks and filesharing apps. For example the rapper Benefit becoming an internet underground legend with a $5 mic and a $12 sound card.
As time went on, the above development spawned mash-up culture which moved from filesharing platforms over to the blogosphere.
SoundCloud emerged and made it even easier to follow and exchange with other producers around the world, spawning remix-heavy genre subcultures like Moombahton, ‘EDM Trap’, and ‘Cloudrap’.
Anyone with a mobile phone being able to produce, mix or remix media.
‘Remix’ becoming a default interaction through the dynamics of Snapchat, Instagram Stories, Musically and TikTok as people use face filters, music, and various imagery as overlays to interact with friends and connect to new people.
Koji’s bet seems to be that there’s room for remixable media inside these platforms – think embedding a TikTok post (content) into an Instagram Story (context), but then being able to change elements of the content independently from context.
Short version: we’ll see remixable content appear in countless contexts and will be able to move that content from one context (e.g. Fortnite) to another (e.g. Instagram Stories) without having it attached to the context (e.g. a screenshot of something (content) inside Fortnite (context)).
This will allow for an integrated web where you can interact with media from very day-to-day layers (like photo-based social media) to layers further removed from the physical world (like virtual reality). Like that time Zuckerberg demoed Oculus VR and Priscilla Chan (in ‘the real world’) called him while he was plugged into VR (see the Mixed reality section).
Sticking to the theme of layers: Voicemod allows people to adjust their voice digitally in real-time. In a virtual environment, you can design your avatar however you wish, but unless you’re great at voice acting your voice will sound kind of ‘normal’.
In more every day terms: we’ve all seen Instagram and Snapchat filters that add dog features to friends’ faces — Voicemod makes the voice equivalent of that.
While their technology seems targeted towards demographics in immersive, fully virtual environments like online games or VR-environments, they also cater to YouTubers.
One of the things they’ll do with their investment is double down on mobile, for which they’ve already teamed up with T-Pain who’s well-known for his use of auto-tune.
What does it mean for music?
The first aspect to point out is that voice modification has become increasingly easy and cheap to achieve, even in real-time. The second aspect is that BITKRAFT and Voicemod see a future with a high adoption of voice modification and the avatarisation of voice.
We already have virtual pop stars, so the boundary between virtual and ‘real’ is blurring, especially now that we can simulate elements that up until now were artefacts of “the real world” like our voice. Whereas today’s virtual pop stars didn’t emerge from the virtual landscape, future music personalities could come from this landscape, including their pre-programmed voices. Consider an influencer who’s mostly known for their in-game personality; now what if that influencer becomes popular for their music?
It’s the next generation of digital native.
Playable Worlds
The first thing you need to know about this startup is that it’s founded by Raph Koster, who was the lead designer for Ultima Online (UO). UO was an incredibly influential MMORPG: massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. It was released in 1997 – years before Runescape and World of Warfcraft. And people arestill playing it today, lauding its open world of worlds where gameplay is as much player-made as it is scripted.
The next thing you need to know is that Playable Worlds intend to accelerate the development of a concept called the metaverse. The metaverse is the idea of being able to plug into a virtual environment that connects all kinds of different virtual environments. Minecraft and Roblox are often mentioned as examples due to the ability for people to creatively craft various environments and objects. Fortnite also has characteristics of this, as beyond a gaming environment it now also contains an environment to hang out in and perhaps even enjoy a concert called Party Royale (pictured above).
Playable Worlds‘ first goal is to create a “cloud-native sandbox MMO” game, which sounds reminiscent of aforementioned Ultima Online. Sam Engelbardt, one of the company’s investors, says that“Koster’s vision and demonstrated ability to give players a compelling sandbox for the expression of their digital identities makes him exactly the sort of founder that he likes to back. Englebardt is backing companies that he believes will lay the foundation for the metaverse.”
What does it mean for music?
While Koji and Voicemod are tools that help people immerse inside and across “the metaverse”, Playable Worlds’ team is building out the technology to enable such a metaverse and then building a game with that technology.
Soon, our assumed digital identities will be as important as our given day-to-day identity – which is something that has actually already occurred for many people in the earlier days of the internet with its internet forums, chatrooms, and networks, before using your real name and identity were the status quo.
With that emerging landscape come new types of fan culture and many new possibilities to connect with people who may have a variety of identities across virtual environments. If that sounds niche: that’s how it starts. Ultima Online provided a stepping stone towards the landscape of Twitch, Fortnite, and other virtual experiences which the music industry is committing itself to now, 20 years later.
Last week, at Sónar+D, I finally got to try out TheWaveVR as the founders were there to demo and pitch in the startup competition. The company has built a way for DJs to perform in VR and bring an audience from around the world together. It does this in a very fun and visual way, and this was probably the first time that a VR experience has made me seriously considering buying a VR setup.
Here’s why.
Over the last decade, I’ve spent a lot of time discovering music on Soundcloud and have seen microgenres rise and fall, with some blowing up and changing the sound of pop (e.g. moombahton, and then ‘EDM trap’). Subcultures and music styles used to be clustered to particular cities, but because of online platforms people from around the world can build on each other’s sounds rapidly. I call it ‘Soundcloud culture’, although the phenomenon is not limited to Soundcloud.
Tools like Turntable.fm, and now Plug.dj, have made it possible for people to gather online into chatrooms and play music to each other. These subcultures have embraced these tools to throw small online gatherings, bringing together all the top producers in their styles for virtual listening parties, or cyber raves.
It’s very akin to the subcultures that exist around video games, and particularly MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. There’s a sense of community and friendship, because people get to share something they don’t get to do irl (‘in real life’). I’ve written about gamers as a music subculture before, but I haven’t pointed out the connection to Soundcloud culture.
Many of these pioneering DJs and producers in microgenres have nowhere to go. They might not live anywhere with clubs, be too young to go to any, or there might simply not be enough critical mass for their sound to take it into the local clubs. So they take it online, where every niche can find an audience (for an example of a microgenre, check out Gorge). As with many gamers, it becomes far easier for these producers to express themselves virtually than in non-digital settings.
Back to TheWaveVR.
TheWaveVR is taking this to the next level, making the entire experience more immersive. What caught my attention is when Aaron Lemke, one of the founders, explained to me that they’re doing a weekly rave at a set time. All of the above instantly clicked into place.
When gamers have free time, they check out Steam, Battle.net, or similar tools, to see if any of their friends or team members are online, so they can play a round or just sign on, chat, and hang out. Social listening platforms do a similar thing, but they’re not nearly as fun or engaging for the audience as games. For the audience, they’re basically a radio station with a chatroom.
This is what TheWaveVR is changing, by giving the audience visual ways to interact with each other and the DJ. And this is what makes me finally ‘get it’ when it comes to VR: as a media format for social platforms it makes so much sense.
People are skeptical whether virtual reality is ‘the next big thing’ for music. And they’re right: there are many obstacles. But it’s not important. The people pondering such questions are not the target audience for these experiences in the next few years.
Online subcultures are the target audience for VR experiences, and particularly the ones connected to gamer subculture. Gamers are going to be the ones to first embrace this medium, and while the world’s figuring out whether to take it seriously and what to do with it, it’s gamers that will define the soundtrack for the medium: just like they’ve done with YouTube.
Last Friday, I had the pleasure of representing IDAGIO on stage at a conference for the first time since joining as Product Director one month ago. It was my first time attending a conference dedicated to classical, and since I haven’t written much about that part of the music business yet, I want to highlight some of the innovations I was introduced to at Classical:NEXT.
The classical music world has a set of specific challenges. Most discussed is how to address new audiences and how to win them as fans of orchestras, ensembles, and soloists, and get them into venues for live performances.
It’s a challenge, because you don’t want to sacrifice traditions which often go back hundreds of years. But you’re also dealing with shorter attention spans, and an enormous amount of choice when it comes to experiencing live music: classical, or not.
Another issue is the sheer number of people and instruments required to perform particular works. Or that music streaming services are designed for pop music (performer, album, song), and are not structured around all the data you get with classical (composer, work, performer, recording, instrumentation, era, soloists, etc).
I’ll be writing about these topics more in the future, because I think the wider music business has a lot to learn from classical music. For now, I want to focus on some of the innovative projects and products I met with (or shared a stage with) at Classical:NEXT.
LOLA
One of the most popular MUSIC x TECH x FUTURE articles ever, was about how the music business can become more sustainable. I mentioned developments in VR might make it easier for musicians to collaborate or practice over distance, without having to leave the home.
LOLA is a piece of to let performers practice with each other digitally, audio visually. For this, latency must be reduced as much as possible, to less than 30ms. For comparison, Skype has about 500ms latency.
So far, LOLA, short for low latency, has been able to get musicians and dancers from institutions around the world to practice, as well as perform with each other.
A demo of LOLA (starts at 3:50):
Gigle
The on-demand economy is starting to have a real impact on the music business. There are numerous platforms that let you book bands and musicians, each with their own twist. Most are kind of like an Airbnb for music: you browse the catalogue of musicians, compare prices, and book whichever suits you best.
What separates Gigle, which hails from Helsinki, Finland, is that they’re mobile-first. They’re trying to lower the barrier to booking music: instead of getting the same old boring flowers and wine for someone’s birthday, why not get a violinist in?
The excuse for focusing on the desktop browser experience is often that you want people to be able to think things over calmly, keep an overview, and then make a decision. If your goal is to remove barriers, focusing on mobile is the right way to go: if you can’t do it on mobile, then you need to go back to the drawing board. Gigle’s right to emphasise the mobile experience.
At this point, the mobile phone is the personal computer we most often access. Maybe we don’t spend less time on it than on our desktop computers or laptops (although for many it’s the other way around already), but even for those of us that are chained to our computers, the amount of times per day we access our mobile phones far exceeds that of any other computer.
Australian Discovery Orchestra
Perhaps one of Australia’s youngest orchestras, the ADO has an interesting digital strategy. Besides livestreaming their concerts, they turn some of their recordings into virtual experiences. People get placed into game-like environments, and then have to complete certain objectives to move through the composition.
This is an interesting way of adding another layer of experience to the music, which hopefully resonates with new audiences. I think the problem for classical music is not that young audiences think classical is terrible: they don’t. They’re just indifferent, have little understanding of it, feel overwhelmed because they don’t know where to begin, or feel that the genre has a stuffy image.
So give them something they can understand. Give them something with objectives. Something that encourages them to explore, to be curious. Something that is designed for a lack of understanding and knowledge as a starting point. That’s the powerful thing about these virtual experiences.
TrueLinked
Concocted as a way to get musicians more gigs and opportunities, TrueLinked also provides a way for people in classical music to organise the process of performing and recording music.
If you thought the logistics around casting for a band were hard, imagine a full-size orchestra with anywhere between 50 and a 100 members.
The platform has ways of categorising musicians by level, understanding of repertoire, collaborators, and other factors, so that the demand-side of the marketplace can easily figure out how to prioritize the people they contact. This provides artists with a great way to market themselves within their niche.
I’m sure there were lots of other innovative ideas & apps presented at the conference. I only had the one day there, and didn’t have much time to look around and attend the talks and panel discussions. Ping me on Twitter — always happy to learn more about interesting projects.
Special thanks to Katariina Nyberg of ExClaM! Digital for organising & chairing the session I met some of these startups at.
Are gamers the biggest millennial subculture in music? An exploration of ‘online-only’ music.
With the rise of the internet, music has lost more than industry revenues. Music has lost its cultural monopoly for identity building. Music used to be the only fast way in which people could understand that there are other people around the world, with similar ideas and feelings. People who are just like them. Now, social media & internet communities have stripped music from that. A Google search can instantly connect you to people who think the same things you do. Music is simply not important for that anymore.
A large aspect of music’s identity building nature used to be subcultures. Music was at the core, and perhaps the fuel for these subcultures. Subcultures still exist though, but not in the massive way they used to and have less appeal for the middle class. Many that remain are porous, intertwined with all the shades of ‘hipster’ you can imagine.
But there is one massive subculture that remains: gamers. It’s an identity and producers are providing it with a soundtrack.
Emblematic of the music culture among gamers is the label No Copyright Sounds. It was created to discover and provide royalty-free music for gaming videos. By now, it has grown out to a YouTube channel with millions of followers, and hundreds of thousands of followers on their other channels, adding up to millions. They’re now part of AEI, a full-stack music company which also runs a handful of other well-known music networks.
No Copyright Sounds is emblematic, because it comes from the subculture itself. It represents the gamer, which is the epitome of the digital native. They expect free access to music, which is why you’ll see most of the music targeted at this audience offered as free downloads. They don’t expect free music, because they’re unwilling to pay. They spend lots of money on their computers and games. They want free music because of the convenience. You might pay for Spotify, but if you want to share music with other gamers, it’s still more effective to drop a YouTube link.
Another aspect of the digital native is that they exist in networks. If you want information to spread in networks, you have to remove the barriers. So to serve them, you have to go free-first. This means producers in genres specifically targeted at gamers are either looking for alternative revenue streams, or are happy to do it for the love of it. Most are gamers themselves: they’re producing for people like them and get fulfilment from that. It can be that simple.
Perhaps the largest online-only genre is something called nightcore (nxc for short). Nightcore is a remix culture. Most commonly, producers take a pop or dance song, raise the BPM and pitch, do some additional editing and that’s a wrap. Here’s an example of Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Been Gone getting the nxc treatment. But sometimes the BPM is not raised, sometimes it’s rock or metal, sometimes it’s an original production. It’s basically the opposite of vaporwave.
To some, nightcore edits can look like blatant rip-offs, but what they’re doing is they’re translating a song and sound to a different audience. Would I listen to Kelly Clarkson? No. Would I listen to nightcore Kelly Clarkson? Well… Yes. 😅
The spectrum of music for gamers has a lot of gradients and you can go deep into niches. For instance, related to the gamer subculture is the phenomenon of furries, basically people that enjoy role-playing in custom-made anthropomorphic animal suits. There’s also an online equivalent, cyber furries, which is probably best represented by the Lapfox Trax label. All the producers on the label are avatars of the same guy.
Numbers mentioned earlier already showed that this is not an underground movement, and services are taking note. Twitch, a platform for streaming games, created a music section. Spotify has a whole section of playlists aimed at gamers.
The most exciting or inspiring thing about this subculture is that people can be themselves without compromise, make the music they believe in, and find audiences for it. Music that you’ll never hear at a liveshow, like the Undertale soundtrack, but finds resonance with millions of people online. And then there’s the cross-overs.
Due to the sugary nature of nightcore, it found lots of sympathy from artists inspired by the music of SOPHIE or the PC Music label. Both have been important to pop music in recent years, with the former producing for Madonna, and the latter resisting an offer from Skrillex. Their sounds can be described as a kind of artsy, over-the-top, hyperpop music. Nightcore artists are happy to incorporate that, to provide a more accessible version of the style:
Speaking about accessible… You know what’s not accessible? Hardcore. Gamers enjoy the high energy offered by happy hardcore, an offshoot of 90s hardcore rave. So, that too, finds an audience:
I’m by no means trying to make an exhaustive list. The music is diverse, and I want to focus on the trend and the business aspect.
The most important thing is: most of the people who listen to this music will never see these artists live. Partly because they just might not be interested in going out to a club, but also because there’s just not really a scene for it, despite these artists having online followings of hundreds of thousands or millions.
Outsiders are taking note, but the music scene’s very much defined as ‘by gamers, for gamers’. While now it’s niche in business terms, and hidden from plain sight if you’re not involved with it, it has three trends going for it.
One is the rise of virtual reality and tools that allow for ‘cyber raves’.
The other is that it’s getting easier to sample, remix and edit tracks and distribute the music, without the fear that it will be taken down. The former CEO of Beatport now runs Metapop, which focuses on exactly this problem. And there’s Dubset, which has partnerships with major streaming services.
With the trends going for it, this music subculture with all its subgenres, is about to blow up.
Every month this year has been the hottest in recorded history. Our weather is getting increasingly unpredictable, leading to more storms and floods in some areas and extreme droughts and forest fires in others.
The importance of selling music, or solving problems in the music business, pales in comparison with these issues.
However, these are not separate. We are the environment and our actions affect it. You can bet that last century’s vast record distribution networks made an important contribution to our CO2 output.
Can you guess how much of the CO2 footprint of a CD purchase comes from the ride between the consumer’s home and retail outlet?
10%?
Bit more.
Try something like 20-30%.
Well..
Still wrong.
It’s 50%.
Comparison of six album purchase scenarios in GHG emissions (g CO2/album). Error bars represent 90% credible intervals from Monte Carlo analysis. (Source: Microsoft, Intel)
In economics, there is a concept called negative externalities which is defined as “economic activity that imposes a negative effect on an unrelated third party.” Take the CD trade as an example. It imposed a large negative effect on consumers, since the taxes levied around transportation do not raise enough money to reverse the effects of the associated CO2 output.
There are many remaining negative externalities in the music business, but technological innovation can help alleviate problems. It’s in our economic interest to care about these negative externalities. If we can prevent scenarios with cataclysmic weather events, consumers might be a little more relaxed to go see a gig, buy some merch, and spend money on music instead of sand bags to protect their house against a flood. I’m not exaggerating: floods in US coastal cities have more than doubled since the 1980s.
Transportation
As highlighted before, transportation is one of the biggest contributors to CO2 output. What can we do besides driving hybrids or environment-‘friendly’ trucks?
The commute to the studio
Democratized means of production, such as production software and more affordable high quality digital equipment, have reduced the need for regular commutes to the studio. Studios may still be a necessity due to acoustics, sound isolation and for recording purposes, but you don’t need them every step of the way.
Bedroom producers are polar bears’ best friends.
The commute to the office
What goes for musicians, definitely goes for most people with office jobs in the music business. If you want to be a sustainable company in this day and age, encourage everyone who’s able to, to work from (close to) home at least 1-2 days a week.
VR and concerts
Perhaps the biggest contributors to the industry’s carbon emissions are live touring and festivals. They require equipment to be shipped, band members to be flown, and fans to be congregated. In the UK, audience travel is estimated to account for 43% of the industry’s gas emissions. The rise of electronic dance music and hiphop have helped to reduce the amount of equipment, and band members, being flown around. Virtual reality could be a next step.
While VR won’t replace the concert experience, it will offer a new competing experience. Being able to host virtual performances for fans worldwide, at a much lower cost, won’t just help reduce emissions, but can also alleviate some of the stress that a lifestyle of always being on tour entails. There has been much attention for mental health in music recently: perhaps VR can help?
VR, band practice and collaboration
Another reason why people come together a lot is for practice and collaboration. What if you could work together in a virtual environment, from the comfort of your homes? What if that virtual environment replicated a normal practice studio perfectly? What if that virtual environment could provide an experience richer, especially in terms of features, than a real world place?
Merch, 3D Printing, and distributed manufacturing
Another big cost to the industry, consumer, and environment: shipping merchandise. And let’s think beyond just the t-shirts. Some artists ship in large quantities, but most don’t have the scale to mass-produce. They produce small batches, and then ship them around the world from where they live. It would arrive at your home or a local pick-up point. What if instead, you order something, it’s produced at the nearest 3D printer and you can pick it up from there. Not only are there less emissions involved, but it might be faster too. There are still questions about whether the amount of energy required offsets the carbon emissions, particularly for mass production, but some printers are performing great.
Services like 3D Hubs are already providing over 1 billion people with access to 3D printers within 10 miles from their home.
Developments in commercial flight
Even if we don’t do anything, technology is being developed to make flight a lot cleaner. Biofuels may reduce carbon emissions by 36-85%. Longer term, lithium-ion batteries may allow for solar-powered flight. We’re not quite there yet, but as can be seen in the video below, Elon Musk is optimistic that it’s doable.
Hardware
Now let’s tackle the impact of producing some of the equipment necessary for making music. Some instruments get resold, recycled, or re-used. A lot of hardware doesn’t, though. According to a UN study, only 15.5% of ‘e-waste’ gets recycled.
Furthermore, there is a lot of unused value sitting inside communities.
Self-driving vehicles promise to reduce the amount of cars we need to manufacture. Why? Because our cars are standing still 95% of the time. If cars are automated and shared, one car could service many more people on a day than it would normally do in a month.
Likewise, a lot of instruments and equipment go unused for vast amounts of time. What if there was a way to share this value with other musicians in your community? Think Airbnb for music equipment, which includes insurance. A startup called Demooz lets you borrow things to try before you buy. A startup with a broader use case, Peerby, lets you lend to and borrow from your neighbours. For free, or you can charge a fee.
So, maybe you don’t have to go to the studio to use a good microphone and there is also no necessity for everyone to own all of the equipment they might need either.
Tents get left behind, a lot of water is used to clean, and cars queue up for hours to get into parking lots.
One of the most interesting music-related startup accelerators has to be Open-House. They look at how events can be made more efficient, but also how festivals can be used as a case study for how we organise humanitarian aid, or solving other societal issues.
Their startups include Kartent, a recyclable cardboard tent, Sanitrax, which makes the toilet experience more efficient, and Watt-Now, an energy monitoring system for festivals.
Each year, Amsterdam Dance Event organises a full day of presentations, panels and discussions about sustainability in events and dance music, called ADE Green. Other conferences should take note.
Conferences
Music industry events used to be the only way to handle business for a lot of people. Now, with fast communication, video calls, etc. that aspect has lost its importance. Even for networking, Slack channels like the Music Tech Network or good old Twitter might be a n easier way to get in touch with relevant people, and especially more CO2 efficient. Sure, online networking doesn’t build the same trust relation as meeting face to face does, but collaboration does – and with such vast arsenals of tools at our disposal for online collaboration, there has never been a better chance to involve people from around the world in your projects.
And if you’re going to organise a conference that flies in a lot of people – at least dedicate some time to sustainability.
Using music to inspire
Music is powerful. When people come to a festival, for many, it will be an experience they’ll never forget.
Music is part of everyone’s life. From Fortune 500 CEO to high school student, from plumber to engineer.
This gives us a unique position. We get to dictate the standard. We get to influence what is ‘cool’, and what should be considered normal.
Consider a large-scale, ‘green’ festival, such as the UK’s Shambala. Implementing these solutions has a ripple effect.
Music has the power to inspire movements and new societal norms. It can ignite revolutions.
Let’s use music’s power to inspire people to build a greener world.
Extra resources
If you want to make the music business more sustainable, here are some amazing sets of resources to help you on your way.
Julie’s Bicycle: a global charity dedicated to making the creative industries sustainable. They have a vast set of resources ranging from guides, to fact sheets, and webinars.
Ouishare: a collaborative economy initiative that does research, connects people together, and shares advice and insight into how sharing can make us more resource efficient.
