Music Ally

Augmented reality is the term used to describe overlaying computer-generated imagery on a live video feed. It’s fairly common in the world of sports TV – think virtual sponsor logos on cricket pitches, or the first-down line used in American Football TV broadcasts.

But there’s an increasing buzz around consumer uses of AR, thanks to webcams and mobile phones. Recently, some of that buzz has included music.

John Mayer

The most recent headlines relating to music and AR came from John Mayer’s launch of a video for his song Heartbreak Warfare. Fans go to his website, turn on their webcam, and hold up a printed or mobile version of a special icon, which launches the video. They then appear in the background of the video, using the live feed from their cam. It has to be said, it takes two or three attempts to work properly, but it’s pretty impressive when it does. However, the press release rather rashly claimed that it was the first AR music video – but in fact it was beaten to the punch by…

Los Valentinos

Australian band Los Valentinos launched their own augmented reality video just days before Mayer’s went live. It works slightly differently, superimposing the band on reality. Fans download and print out a marker, and then when they go to the video and turn their webcam on, the band appear on that marker in hologram-like fashion. The site is also set up for UGC, with fans able to upload videos of themselves playing the video (if that makes sense). There’s one with a baby, another in someone’s mouth, and the obligatory ‘balancing on an iPhone’ effort.

Sean Kingston

Launching an individual AR music video is one thing, but how about an entire karaoke site? That’s what Sean Kingston did a couple of months before Mayer and Los Valentinos. It involved printing a special icon in the CD booklet for his album, which gave users access to the special AR section of his website. They could then sing along into their webcams to Sean’s Fire Burning track, with an animated version of the star appearing to dance around them. There were sharing elements here, too – the resulting videos could be posted on social networks or shared on the main site.

Mobile apps

Augmented reality isn’t just about whizzy artist videos, though. AR technology is also being used in a new generation of smartphone applications, particularly on the iPhone and Android platforms. And here, too, it has relevance to music, albeit more focused around live venues and gigs. An app called the Layar Reality Browser shows what’s possible with this kind of AR technology.

The app overlays ‘layers’ of data onto a live feed from the handset’s camera, based on the user’s current location – and since it’s an open platform, any developer can create a layer using whatever data they like. For example, it can show Wikipedia entries for nearby landmarks, or bring up Flickr photos that have been uploaded in that area. So how does this translate to live music? Well, there are several layers focused on gigs, including Bands In Town and The Gig Map. They bring up information on bands playing nearby, including the ability to click through to buy tickets.

Gimmick or Great?

Augmented reality is technically innovative, and on the mobile side in particular is currently causing a lot of buzz in Web 2.0 circles. But is it really going to be a valuable new area as opposed to a novelty gimmick? You could argue that the kind of features seen in Layar could just as easily be done using 2D maps – and indeed, the latest versions of Google Maps’ mobile app does just that. Meanwhile, AR music videos are currently good for getting press coverage, but whether they’ll catch on once the novelty wears off remains to be seen.

Tags: augmented reality, john mayer, layar, los valentinos, sean kingston

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Digital Music Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.