Toggle search
Toggle menu
5.1K
5.9K
229
48K
VR & AR Wiki
Toggle preferences menu
Toggle personal menu
Not logged in
Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits.

Virtual concert

From VR & AR Wiki
More actions

A virtual concert is a music performance that the audience attends inside a computer-generated environment or through immersive media rather than in the same physical room as the performers. The term covers several formats: shows held inside social VR platforms and online virtual worlds, live or recorded concerts filmed with 360-degree or 180-degree stereoscopic cameras and watched in a head-mounted display, productions that composite captured performers into designed virtual stages, and events staged inside online games such as Fortnite and Roblox. Onderdijk and colleagues describe music concerts in VR ("VR concerts") as a subcategory of the wider field of virtual concerts.[1]

Early examples took place in desktop virtual worlds such as Second Life in 2006.[2] Consumer VR headsets brought stereoscopic concert video and headset-based venues from 2014 onward, and some of the largest reported audiences have gathered in online games: Epic Games reported 12.3 million concurrent players for Travis Scott's Astronomical event in Fortnite in April 2020.[3] The COVID-19 pandemic, which closed live venues, pushed many artists toward livestreamed and virtual performances, and much of the academic research on how audiences experience these events dates from that period.[1][4]

Reviewed 6 October 2026. Checked every cited paper (Onderdijk 2021 and 2023, Swarbrick 2021, Charron 2017, Yakura and Goto 2020, Lee et al. 2025, Whittaker and Wagner 2025) and every press and official source for dates, figures, names and quotes. About review dates.

Formats

Onderdijk and colleagues, in a 2023 survey study published in the journal Virtual Reality, grouped VR music concert experiences into those offered on dedicated platforms (their examples include MelodyVR, Sansar, VRTIFY, NOYS VR, AmazeVR and Sensorium Galaxy's PRISM World), those held inside general social VR platforms (AltspaceVR, VRChat, Meta's Horizon, Mozilla Hubs, High Fidelity, Anyland and NeosVR), and those staged in social games (Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox).[1] The formats differ mainly in how the performer is captured and how the audience is represented.

Format How the performer appears How the audience attends Examples
Stereoscopic 360-degree or 180-degree concert video Camera footage of a real show, often with spatial audio Headset or flat screen; live stream or on demand Jaunt's Paul McCartney recording (2014); NextVR and Live Nation streams (2016); Metallica in Apple Immersive Video (2025)[5][6][7]
Shared virtual venue around streamed video Video of a real event shown inside a virtual venue (multiple 180-degree cameras for the 2022 Foo Fighters show) Avatars in a shared virtual audience Oculus Venues (2018); Foo Fighters in Horizon Venues (2022)[8][9]
Captured performer composited into a designed virtual world 3D camera or motion-capture recording of the artist placed in computer-generated environments Headset, at home or in a theater AmazeVR's Enter Thee Hottieverse (2022)[10]
Avatar performance in a social VR or virtual world Performer's own avatar, with live audio Avatars, in VR or on a desktop client Second Life shows (2006); DJ nights in VRChat clubs[2][11]
In-game event Animated or motion-captured digital version of the artist Player characters in a non-VR online game Marshmello and Travis Scott in Fortnite; Lil Nas X in Roblox[12][13]

The word is also applied to shows in physical venues where digital avatars replace the live performers. One example is ABBA Voyage: Industrial Light & Magic created digital versions of the four members of ABBA, who perform with a live 10-piece band in a purpose-built arena of 3,000 capacity at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, from 27 May 2022.[14] Such shows use no headset and fall outside VR proper.

How it works

Capture

Headset concert video has been recorded with multi-camera stereoscopic rigs and microphone arrays that preserve the direction of sound. For its 2014 Paul McCartney recording, Jaunt used its stereoscopic 360-degree camera system with a microphone array whose spatial audio follows the viewer's head movements.[5] NextVR said it upgraded its audio system specifically for music before its 2016 concert deal with Live Nation.[6] For a 2025 Metallica film, Apple deployed 14 Apple Immersive Video cameras, a mix of stabilized, cable-suspended and remote-controlled dolly cameras, to record the band and its audience in 180-degree video with Spatial Audio.[7]

Made-for-VR productions take a different route. AmazeVR filmed Megan Thee Stallion against a green screen with a 3D camera and merged the captured performance into custom virtual worlds; UploadVR noted that the result is not true volumetric capture.[10] Music Business Worldwide reported that the company's system uses proprietary 9K cameras and software that automates Unreal Engine-based visual effects, and that it can run more than 100 headsets at once for theater screenings.[15] In-game concerts instead animate a digital version of the artist; the Lil Nas X show in Roblox used a motion-captured version of the rapper, and the game world changed with each of the four songs.[13]

Audience and social presence

In shared venues each attendee is an avatar. Many platforms, Oculus Venues among them, capture each user's movements through the sensors in the headset and controllers and reproduce them on that user's avatar, so audience members can see one another react.[16] Oculus told Engadget in 2018 that a live Venues event could have a crowd of around 1,000 avatars; attendees could switch seats or choose a solo viewing mode.[8] Lee, Cho and Lee note that VR platforms often limit the number of users per session for technical stability; together with the need for a headset, this keeps VR concert audiences smaller than those of livestreams.[17]

Performers in social VR can also play from inside the headset. NME described VRChat clubs such as Loner Online and Tube, where DJs perform in headsets; a Loner Online DJ said the small gap under the Valve Index let him look down at his physical decks without leaving the virtual club. Attendees without VR hardware can join through VRChat's desktop client.[11]

History

Date Event
August 2006 Infinite Vision Media brings singer Suzanne Vega into Second Life for a performance and interview.[2] NPR noted the same year that Ben Folds had also performed a concert in Second Life.[18]
November-December 2014 Jaunt VR releases a 360-degree stereoscopic recording of Paul McCartney performing "Live and Let Die" at Candlestick Park, San Francisco, filmed in front of about 70,000 fans; it launched for Android with Google Cardboard and then for Oculus Rift on Windows and Mac.[5]
May 2016 NextVR and Live Nation announce a deal to stream "hundreds" of concerts in VR; at the time the NextVR app ran only on Samsung Gear VR.[6]
2017 Wave, then called TheWaveVR, releases its social VR music app on Steam, followed by the Oculus PC store in 2018.[19]
30 May 2018 Oculus Venues launches on Oculus Go and Gear VR with a Vance Joy concert from Red Rocks Amphitheatre.[20]
2 February 2019 Marshmello plays a 10-minute set at Pleasant Park in Fortnite; Epic Games put concurrent attendance at about 10.7 million, above the game's previous record of 8.3 million.[12][21]
April 2020 Travis Scott's Astronomical runs as five in-game shows in Fortnite. Epic reported 12.3 million concurrent players at one show and 27.7 million unique players who attended 45.8 million times across all five.[3][22]
November 2020 Lil Nas X performs four shows in Roblox; the shows drew 33 million views in total, and Roblox did not disclose unique attendance.[13]
March 2021 Wave shuts down its VR app, having already shifted its shows to non-VR distribution.[19]
13 February 2022 Foo Fighters play a free concert in Horizon Venues for Meta Quest 2 users, filmed with 180-degree VR cameras and directed by Mark Romanek.[9]
April-July 2022 AmazeVR's Enter Thee Hottieverse with Megan Thee Stallion tours movie theaters, where audiences watch through supplied headsets.[15]
27 May 2022 ABBA Voyage opens in London (avatar show without headsets).[14]
6 June 2022 Meta folds its Venues event space into Horizon Worlds.[23]
30 November 2022 The Megan Thee Stallion concert becomes available at home on Meta Quest through App Lab.[10]
2 February 2024 AmazeVR's concert app launches on Apple Vision Pro with performances by Zara Larsson, T-Pain and UPSAHL.[24]
14 March 2025 Apple releases Metallica, an Apple Immersive Video concert film recorded in Mexico City, for Vision Pro.[7]

Virtual worlds and early headset video

Second Life hosted live music years before consumer headsets. When Suzanne Vega performed there in August 2006, Massively reported that the concurrent crowd of about 80 to 100 users caused heavy lag.[2] Stereoscopic concert video followed the first wave of VR headsets. Jaunt's McCartney recording was the company's first publicly released stereoscopic 360-degree content.[5] NextVR, which until then had streamed sports through partners such as Fox Sports, signed its Live Nation deal in May 2016.[6]

Social VR venues

Wave, a virtual event company formerly known as TheWaveVR, was founded in 2016. Its Wave Beta VR app, released on Steam in 2017 and on the Oculus PC store in 2018, let audiences join virtual venues in VR and let users host their own performances. Artists including John Legend and Lindsey Stirling performed in real time through motion-capture suits and face-tracking hardware that drove their avatars. Road to VR reported, citing Crunchbase, that the company had raised about US$40 million in venture capital. Over 2019 and 2020 Wave moved its productions to livestreaming and non-VR channels; co-founder and chief executive Adam Arrigo wrote that "Artists need audiences to thrive, and we realized VR just wasn't there yet, and there was a bigger opportunity for artists outside headsets." The company kept the VR app running for its community until the end of March 2021, when it closed mainly because its user tools depended on Google's Poly 3D model service, which was itself shutting down.[19]

Facebook's Oculus Venues launched on 30 May 2018 with a Vance Joy concert, and its first summer program also included MLB games, AEG Presents concerts, Gotham Comedy Live shows and Lionsgate film screenings.[8] Alongside social viewing with avatars it offered a solo viewing mode, community moderators and muting and blocking tools.[20] The app was later renamed Horizon Venues.[25] Meta streamed a Foo Fighters show there after the Super Bowl on 13 February 2022, with cameras placed around a custom-built stage.[9] From 6 June 2022, Venues became part of Horizon Worlds, which at the time was open only to adults in the United States and Canada.[23][25]

Concerts in online games

Concerts inside non-VR online games have drawn audiences in the millions. During Marshmello's 2019 Fortnite show, player characters danced, bounced beach balls and were launched into the air during the set.[26] Travis Scott's Astronomical (2020) set the game's all-time concurrency record, according to Epic.[3] Attendance figures for these events are not directly comparable: Epic's Fortnite figures count concurrent or unique players, while the 33 million figure for Lil Nas X in Roblox counts total views.[22][13]

Made-for-VR productions

AmazeVR was founded in 2015 and is based in Los Angeles and Seoul.[15] Its first commercial concert, Enter Thee Hottieverse with Megan Thee Stallion, was announced for theaters in 10 United States cities between April and July 2022.[15] TechCrunch later reported that the tour reached 15 cities through AMC Theatres, with tickets at US$20 to US$25 and a 75% attendance rate; the company raised a US$17 million Series B round in September 2022.[27] The concert came to Meta Quest at home through App Lab on 30 November 2022. Harry Baker of UploadVR wrote that it traded the social features of venues such as Horizon Venues for something "utterly more immersive, well-designed and unique to VR".[10] AmazeVR's app was a launch-day app for Apple Vision Pro in February 2024.[24]

Apple has used its Apple Immersive Video format for concert content on Vision Pro. Metallica, released on 14 March 2025, contains full performances of "Whiplash", "One" and "Enter Sandman", filmed at the sold-out finale of the second year of the band's M72 World Tour in Mexico City before more than 65,000 fans.[7]

Research

Academic work on virtual concerts comes mostly from music psychology and from human-computer interaction.

  • Motivation and presence. Charron (2017) examined why people attend concerts in a changing technological setting. He wrote that digital mediation keeps the time dimension ("now") of a live performance but loses its space dimension ("here"), and suggested that immersive formats such as spherical video and VR goggles could partly compensate by raising the viewer's sense of presence. He also argued that social motives for attendance had grown stronger in the social media era, when concertgoers share photos and videos with friends who are not present.[28]
  • Livestream experiments. Onderdijk and colleagues (2021) ran three experimental livestreamed concerts. In the second, streamed in 360 degrees on YouTube, 11 participants who watched through smartphone VR viewers reported more physical presence than 12 who watched a regular YouTube stream, and headset use predicted connectedness with the artist, an effect driven by the change in presence.[29]
  • Liveness and social connection. In a survey of 307 people from 13 countries who watched virtual concerts during the pandemic, Swarbrick and colleagues (2021) found that concerts watched live in real time produced more social connection than pre-recorded concerts or livestreams watched later.[4]
  • VR concert attendees. Onderdijk, Bouckaert, Van Dyck and Maes (2023) surveyed 74 people who had attended VR concerts, between January and March 2021. 59% used a headset; among the 70 who named a platform, the most common were YouTube (21%), VRChat (16%), MelodyVR (11%), Oculus Venues (11%) and Wave (7%). Respondents ranked seeing specific artists and the uniqueness of the experience as their main motives and social connectedness as one of the least important. 82% considered VR concerts more accessible than physical ones, 78% said they can show visual effects impossible at regular concerts, and 70% called them "the future of the music industry". A higher level of immersion was linked to more positive evaluations.[1]
  • Virtual audiences. Yakura and Goto (ISMAR 2020) addressed the problem of attending a VR concert when few other users are present. They compared four ways of animating audience avatars (copying the user's own movements, copying recorded movements of other users, repeating beat-synchronous movements, and synthesizing movements from the music with machine learning) against a baseline of motionless avatars. In a study with 20 participants, copying other users and machine-learning synthesis both produced significantly higher co-presence and presence scores than motionless avatars or copies of the user's own movements.[16] Lee, Cho and Lee (CHI EA 2025) turned the chat of a parallel flat-screen livestream into collective movements, cheers and singalongs of virtual audience avatars; in a 48-person study, combining movement and audio reactions gave higher immersion and co-presence than the earlier method.[17]
  • Audiences after the pandemic. In a study of virtual concerts on platforms such as Fortnite, VRChat and Decentraland, Whittaker and Wagner (2025) surveyed 1,003 UK respondents in early 2023 and reported that shifts in audience behavior had lasted beyond the period of COVID-19 isolation.[30]

Yakura and Goto also describe avatar-based live shows in VR, in which an artist drives a 3D cartoon-style avatar with motion capture; they cite an April 2018 event at which more than 2,500 users gathered in a virtual venue to watch a VTuber perform.[16]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Kelsey E. Onderdijk, Lies Bouckaert, Edith Van Dyck, Pieter-Jan Maes (2023-06-05). "Concert experiences in virtual reality environments". Virtual Reality, vol. 27, pp. 2383-2396. Springer. doi:10.1007/s10055-023-00814-y. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-023-00814-y. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Moo Money (2008-04-23). "Cinemassively: Suzanne Vega performs The Queen and the Soldier". Engadget (Massively). https://www.engadget.com/2008-04-23-cinemassively-suzanne-vega-performs-the-queen-and-the-soldier.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Isaac McIntyre (2020-04-26). "Travis Scott Astronomical event sets huge new Fortnite player record". Dexerto. https://www.dexerto.com/fortnite/travis-scott-astronomical-event-sets-huge-fortnite-player-record-1357364/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Dana Swarbrick, Beate Seibt, Noemi Grinspun, Jonna K. Vuoskoski (2021). "Corona Concerts: The Effect of Virtual Concert Characteristics on Social Connection and Kama Muta". Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, article 648448. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648448. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.648448. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Paul James (2014-12-02). "News Bits: Jaunt VR Releases Paul McCartney 'Live and Let Die' 360 VR Experience on Windows and Mac for the Oculus Rift". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/news-bits-jaunt-vr-releases-paul-maccartney-live-let-die-360-vr-experience-windows-mac/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Lucas Matney (2016-05-04). "NextVR gets ready to drop the bass with live VR concerts". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/04/nextvr-gets-ready-to-drop-the-bass-with-live-vr-concerts. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 "Apple unveils immersive concert experience with Metallica for Apple Vision Pro". Apple Newsroom. Apple. 2025-03-11. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/03/apple-unveils-immersive-concert-experience-with-metallica-for-apple-vision-pro/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Nicole Lee (2018-05-30). "Oculus Venues tries to cram the stadium experience into a VR headset". Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2018-05-30-oculus-venues-hands-on.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Scott Hayden (2022-02-08). "Foo Fighters to Play Concert in VR for Free After the Super Bowl". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/foo-fighters-quest-2-concert-super-bowl/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Harry Baker (2022-11-30). "Megan Thee Stallion VR Concert Experience Available Now On Quest". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/megan-thee-stallion-vr-concert/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Jordan Oloman (2021-05-28). "Staying in to go out: exploring the VRChat club scene". NME. https://www.nme.com/features/gaming-features/exploring-vrchats-underground-nightclub-scene-2950650. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Matthew Forde (2019-02-22). "Almost 11m people played Fortnite to watch DJ Marshmello concert". PCGamesInsider.biz. https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68579/almost-11m-people-played-fortnite-to-watch-dj-marshmello-concert/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Dean Daley (2020-11-16). "Lil Nas X's Roblox concert attracted 33 million views". MobileSyrup. https://mobilesyrup.com/2020/11/16/lil-nas-xs-roblox-concert-attracted-33-million-views/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "ABBA Voyage". Industrial Light & Magic. Lucasfilm. https://www.ilm.com/vfx/abba-voyage/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 Jack Needham (2022-03-02). "AmazeVR partners with Megan Thee Stallion on VR Concert tour that uses Unreal Engine-based visual effects". Music Business Worldwide. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/amazevr-partners-with-megan-thee-stallion-on-vr-concert-tour-that-uses-unreal-engine-based-visual-effects/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Hiromu Yakura, Masataka Goto (2020). "Enhancing Participation Experience in VR Live Concerts by Improving Motions of Virtual Audience Avatars". 2020 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). IEEE. pp. 555-565. doi:10.1109/ISMAR50242.2020.00083. https://staff.aist.go.jp/m.goto/PAPER/ISMAR2020yakura.pdf. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Sebin Lee, Yeonho Cho, Jungjin Lee (2025). "Concert Interaction Translation: Augmenting VR Live Concert Experience using Chat-Driven Artificial Collective Reactions". CHI EA '25: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM. doi:10.1145/3706599.3720293. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3720293. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  18. ↑ "A Second Life to Live". NPR (Talk of the Nation). National Public Radio. 2006-10-24. https://www.npr.org/2006/10/24/6375226/a-second-life-to-live. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Ben Lang (2021-01-15). "Wave Deprecates VR App to Focus on Broader Distribution of Its Virtual Performances". Road to VR. https://roadtovr.com/wave-shutters-vr-app-focus-broader-distribution/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 "Bring the Stadium Experience Home: Oculus Venues Now Available on Oculus Go and Gear VR". Meta Quest Blog. Meta. 2018-05-30. https://www.meta.com/blog/bring-the-stadium-experience-home-oculus-venues-now-available-on-oculus-go-and-gear-vr/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  21. ↑ Ian Boudreau (2019-02-02). "Marshmello concert lights up Fortnite's Pleasant Park". PCGamesN. https://www.pcgamesn.com/fortnite/mashmello-concert-video. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Ric Cowley (2020-04-28). "Update: Fortnite's Astronomical Travis Scott concert gathers 27.7 million unique players". PocketGamer.biz. https://www.pocketgamer.biz/fortnites-astronomical-travis-scott-concert-player-record/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Scott Hayden (2022-05-09). "Meta to Merge 'Venues' Event Space into 'Horizon Worlds' Social VR Platform". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/meta-venues-events-horizon-worlds-quest-2/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 "AmazeVR for Apple Vision Pro delivers personalized, immersive, 3D concerts with performances by Zara Larsson, T-Pain, and more". PRWeb. AmazeVR. 2024-02-02. https://www.prweb.com/releases/amazevr-for-apple-vision-pro-delivers-personalized-immersive-3d-concerts-with-performances-by-zara-larsson-t-pain-and-more-302052151.html. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Ian Hamilton (2022-05-06). "Meta Retiring Venues App & Building Events Into Horizon Worlds". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-venues-horizon-worlds/. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  26. ↑ Alyssa Newcomb (2019-02-04). "'Fortnite' hosted a concert online, and 10M people watched". NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/fortnite-hosted-concert-online-10m-people-watched-n966606. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  27. ↑ Kate Park (2022-09-27). "AmazeVR wants to scale its virtual concert platform with $17M funding". TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/27/amazevr-wants-to-scale-its-virtual-concert-platform-with-17m-funding. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  28. ↑ Jean-Philippe Charron (2017). "Music Audiences 3.0: Concert-Goers' Psychological Motivations at the Dawn of Virtual Reality". Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 8, article 800. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00800. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00800. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  29. ↑ Kelsey E. Onderdijk, Dana Swarbrick, Bavo Van Kerrebroeck, Maximillian Mantei, Jonna K. Vuoskoski, Pieter-Jan Maes, Marc Leman (2021). "Livestream Experiments: The Role of COVID-19, Agency, Presence, and Social Context in Facilitating Social Connectedness". Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, article 647929. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647929. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.647929. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
  30. ↑ Laryssa Whittaker, Tom Wagner (2025). "Emerging Patterns of Participation in Virtual Live Concerts: An Initial Study of UK Audiences Post-COVID". IASPM Journal, vol. 15, no. 1. https://iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal/article/view/1493. Retrieved 2026-10-06.
Retrieved from "https://vrarwiki.com/index.php?title=Virtual_concert&oldid=47494"