A few months ago, I wrote about Virtual Reality and how it might change the future of music industry, especially from the perspective of independent musicians. Last week, French electronic music producer Jean-Michel Jarre has announced his new partnership with social VR platform TheWaveVR to allow fans to view his concerts for his new album in virtual reality. With this new initiative, fans will be able to view the concerts at home using VR headsets and remix songs from his new album.

This new initiative by Jarre is really groundbreaking in terms of both live and recording music experiences. With live music, fans are able to experience concerts in virtual reality and with in-app virtual decks, they could also participate further activities which might be of interest of independent musicians – such as selling merchandising. If we have the technology to remix songs on VR headsets, we can easily buy a t-shirt after watching a whole concert from our living room. Moreover, this means that as musicians, we can do concerts to our fans from all over the world. What would this mean for touring and the rest of live music industry is vague at the moment, but it’s bound to make an impact.

In addition to viewing the concerts, fans will also be able to remix tracks on the new album using the in-app virtual decks. The shows will be available to any HTC Vive or Oculus Rift VR headset owner through TheWaveVR’s free app, on Steam and Oculus Home.

It seems that Jean-Michel Jarre is very aware of what he’s doing and he’s up to date with the latest developments in the world of technology and what this means for the future of music. He thinks that virtual reality is part of the next frontier of music. To quote him:

“The ‘Equinoxe Infinity’ album considers where we are going as a society, including the ways artificial intelligence and machine learning may impact us. I’ve always been passionate about the potential of music to merge with future technologies. When I experienced TheWaveVR, I loved that spatial art – one of the specialities of my live shows – isn’t limited to scale or real-life constraints. Creators can host the concert of their imagination.”

You can also check out the previous blog posts I wrote about machine learning and artificial intelligence. Right now, these seem to be very high budget projects for independent musicians to undertake, but with the right collaborations, such as Jacob Collier’s collaboration with MIT, such new technologies can take brand new turns. So in this sense, I would strongly encourage all musicians to seek out collaborations with different institutions and organizations.

Adva Mobile is a marketing services and technology company for creative artists. Using Adva’s mobile services, you can let your fans learn about your latest creative work, run contests, take surveys, reach out to your superfans and engage with them.

Alper Tuzcu is a Berklee College of Music and Denison University alumni, and a Boston based guitarist, songwriter and producer. His new album ‘Aurora’ was released on October 19, 2018 and his debut eclectic album ‘Between 12 Waters’ featuring 8 different vocalists is available on Spotify. In addition to being a musician, he regularly teaches workshops and masterclasses internationally. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter, and for more information you can visit his website www.alpertuzcu.com