Snapchat Is Bringing AR To Live Nation Concerts
The first Live Nation concert to use Snap AR Lenses will be the Electric Daisy Carnival later this month.
Snap and Live Nation Entertainment are teaming up for a multiyear deal that will bring Snapchat AR (augmented reality) experiences to select Live Nation concerts that you can use to find your friends in the crowd, bring the stage and festival grounds to life with AR content, and of course share content on social media.
The first Live Nation concerts to debut Snapchat’s interactive AR lenses will be on May 20-22 during the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. EDC is the largest electronic dance music (EDM) festival in North America, and this year’s Las Vegas lineup will feature popular EDM artists such as Ac Slater B2B Chris Lorenzo, Deorro, DJ Snake, Kream, Lp Giobbi, Nostalgix B2B Wenzday, and many more.
The Electric Daisy Carnival will feature eight different stages that the artists perform on. The rest of the festival grounds are designed to immerse you into these fantastical worlds. This year organizers are bringing a ninth stage to the festival called Bionic Jungle.
Both Snap and Live Nation envision AR becoming a normal part of any concert experience in the same way we see large video screens being used during shows, and with live music fans already bringing their smartphones with them to take photos and videos—or to use as a light to sway over our heads—why not leverage their own perspective as part of the concert experience and use AR to make the experience even more memorable?
Snapchat currently has an average of 600 million daily users, so there’s a pretty good chance that many of those EDM fans in attendance at the Electric Daisy Carnival will have a Snapchat account.
Ben Schwerin, Snap’s senior VP of content and partnerships is counting on that. During a recent Snap Partner Summit, Schwerin said, “We can leverage this huge user base we have in a way that will make augmented reality the next phase of visual expression for artists.”
Music fans will not only be able to use AR to bring their surroundings to life, but Snap and Live Nation also plan on letting you try on concert merch using AR to see how you look in a t-shirt, hat, or sunglasses.
This idea isn’t to keep people on their phones during the entire concert. Schwerin explains how they plan on having AR Lenses being used to strategically enhance moments of the performance. “Each video that gets shared is a really powerful promotion for people who see that to go buy tickets to a concert or festival themselves.” With Snapchat reaching 90% of people between the ages of 13 and 24 in the U.S, these AR-enabled concerts could be an excellent way to attract younger audiences.
To create their concert AR Lenses, Snap will turn to their own creative studio Arcadia to produce content for the Electric Daisy Carnival along with working with artists at future Live Nation events. This includes popular festivals such as Austin City Limits, Beyond Wonderland, Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, Day Trip Festiva, Leeds Festival, Lollapalooza Chicago, Lollapalooza Paris, Reading Festival, Rolling Loud, Roots Picnic, Governors Ball, Wireless Festival, and Lights On.
The idea of using AR and VR technology as part of a live concert experience is growing more popular among promoters and artists. Artists such as the Foo Fighters, 2 Chainz, Megan Thee Stallion, and Billie Eilish have either performed live in VR or launched a VR experience, and just recently Coachella launched Coachellaverse, a digital experience that allows fans from all around the world to interact with the festival in a way that uses a combination of immersive technologies.
Image Credit: Coachella
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