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…

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Sean Kingston’s new album will have a special image in its CD booklet which, when held up to a webcam, launches an augmented reality karaoke session on his website.

That means fans get to sing along to his Fire Burning track, with an animated version of the star dancing around them. The resulting videos can be shared on the site, or posted to other social networks, according to Reuters.

“If I get a 10-year-old kid to get engaged with Sean Kingston by building a video and showing it to his buddies, I just turned on four more guys and gals to him,” says his label Epic’s EVP of marketing Lee Stimmel. It sounds fun, as long as the technology works.