Does Live Music Need An Upgrade?

From silent disco headphones at gigs to videos airdropped from the photo pit, I’ve made a lot of predictions about live music over the years but little has changed.

This week's newsletter is a bit of a 'confession of a future-gazer' edition. Unlike things I foresaw in media and the record industry, flicking through old social posts and Sunday Times columns about the future of festivals and concerts, very few of my predictions about innovations on the horizon came to fruition. The more I've thought about it, I don't think going to a gig is much different to my first ever gig in the early 90s - it was Reef on Fistral Beach, raising money for Surfer's Against Sewage, in case you're curious.

One of the reasons most of these ideas (I'll share a few below) haven't happened is because the experience of watching an incredible live performance doesn't really need to be upgraded. No tech could improve seeing Young Fathers, Health or Pharmakon at full force making a glorious intense feast of noise in a small venue. No AR filter is going to compete with closing your eyes and being swept up by a Sigur Ros set at dusk. No app or sound wizardry is going to enhance seeing Phoebe Bridgers or Cat Power in a chapel with lots of natural reverb. Nothing compares to seeing Saul Williams reading his poetry whilst Youthmovies and Foals played an improvised set. I could go on and on...

If you've followed me for any amount of time, you'll probably know that alongside being a music obsessive, I'm a bit of a future gazer. I am constantly looking for the small incremental changes that can enhance music.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that every gig is like it was in the 90s. Many acts and festivals have embraced tech. For instance, the 3D projection mapping and surround sound systems at Mutek in Montreal are unlike anything I have experienced before or since, and really set off a quest inside of me to find other frontiers of the gigging world. There haven't been many shows that come close to what I saw at Mutek but witnessing Four Tet in Squid Soup's light installation with murmurations of bulbs glowing and pulsing to an incredible set definitely comes close.

Away from live music, I've found myself drawn to sound & visual art installations where the music hits deeper than most live shows. If you're near London, go see Nonotak's transcendent Eclipse in Tower Bridge to understand what I mean. It's like being inside the belly of a Nine Inch Nails album with light art that is both intense and calming. Often at the same time.

This week I have mostly been sifting through old notes and half-baked ideas, and it's abundantly clear that while tech has evolved in music and society, its impact on live gigs remains minimal. The reason I was fishing around in my visions from the past, wasn't a form of self-obsession but because on Friday I’m hosting a panel at Beyond The Music in Manchester (grab a ticket here) about how technology is transforming live music.

Here are a few of predictions from the past. Some might have happened but didn't scale. A few could still happen...

Front Row Photos For All

At a gig back in 2004, I noticed only two people had their Bluetooth open to receive a photo I’d taken. Fast forward to today, and if you wanted to, you could Airdrop photos to hundreds of fellow gig goers - though doing so without consent is definitely on the creepy side!

Being able to opt in to receive a few professional front row photos, a video for your social feeds and an advert / gig flyer feels like a really nice thing venues, artists or media (or corporate brands) could still do. My theory both then and now is that rather than people taking mediocre smart phone photos and having their camera out during a gig, they could just get some decent quality shots. The downside, of course is that most people want their own unique shot as their personal memento and to use for that fomo-inducing social post.

Digital Tour Programmes

I got quite deep into this idea for a while, thinking about what a deluxe edition gig ticket might look like. I imagined it as being a digital fanzine with some voice notes and back stage photos from the band, maybe listening in to sound check. Perhaps dispatches from a behind the scenes reporter or celeb doing a fan Q&A.

Mostly, I like the idea of creating a space to engage with fans going to the same show and sharing your photos and posts about it, and following along the rest of the tour - sort of like people do on fan forums and sub-reddits.

With a crisis in touring, it feels like this idea could form part of a Patreon / Kickstarter crowd-funding for tours. Obviously phone reception in most venues is awful and an ongoing group chat could be distraction too but something like this could be good for getting hyped up for a show, meeting people in your local scene and a long-tail of memories being shared.

Headphones Shows

The first time I experienced a silent disco, I wondered why I couldn’t get a headphones mix of a live show, just like artists get in their in ear monitors. Especially at windy festivals or arenas with boomy sound or shows with lots of annoying people talking. This could also open up events in really unique spaces where a loud PA might not be allowed. Obviously this silos us off a bit from the communal and social experience of a show, so the demand for it would probably be for certain types of music.

Augmented Reality Stage Shows

Eminem experimented with AR filters if you held your phone up, essentially replacing the big screen with a giant performer. Could also bring in surreal and psychedelic art but probably won’t make sense until AR glasses are affordable or wearing your own Daft Punk headset is the norm! Would let acts at a smaller level create visual experiences but it also reduce the amount of trucks hauling a live stage show around the world, which is much better for the planet.

Click & Collect Pint / Merch App

At Corona Capital in Mexico City, people wander through the crowd with trays of drinks on their head and trolleys of delicious mezcal & ice pop cocktails. With more precise location mapping (What3Words, etc) could shows deliver drinks and snacks straight to you? Would mean less time needed for gaps between live sets and time spent queuing for a drink instead of hanging out with friends. Presume with drones, this could even be more tech enabled (why is Daniel Ek investing his Spotify money in defence AI and not beer fairies?!).

Even just being able to order a drink in advance would save some time at the bar and make every gig more like ordering your interlude drinks at fancy venues. This idea was sparked after I went to a BlackBerry Music launch and you could order drinks via IM to your table. Now we have QR codes for table service, so this idea doesn't seem as far fetched as it once did (the drones bit is obviously a bit dystopian).

This click & collect side of an app like this could also work for merch and ensure records you buy from the artist doesn't get damaged in the post. If you ordered your tee in advance, it could also ensure the artist makes the right amount of Medium and XS and XL, rather than them running out of one size or ordering far too many of another.

Last FM Powered DJs

"Combining data on the music tastes of attendees could make the perfect DJ set for the crowd," says my note from the early 2000s. It's not the worst idea in the world but I'm sure my taste could cast a pretty dark cloud over most parties.

I once tried a MVP (that's 'minimal viable product' for those not in tech geek circles) of this playing tracks between acts at a festival based on Last FM RSVPs and it helped dredge some music out that I wouldn’t usually play or had forgotten about.

Just to wrap up this newsletter, the band on stage playing to a crowd bit of gigs doesn't need to change. Not much, anyway. However, after listening to a day of talks at Music Venue Trust's Venues Day yesterday, there is an economic crisis in live music and we definitely need some change to ensure there are still acts and venues to host those shows.

What do you think? Is it time for an evolution in live music rather than a full-blown revolution?