Minecraft Virtual Concerts

What if I told you there was a music festival you could go to without ever having to leave the comfort of your own home it wouldn’t cost you a cent you could stay in your PJs and it could have a whole bunch of artists ranging from Charli XCX to American football well

There is it just takes place in Minecraft have you ever gone to a music festival and if you have when was the last time you went to a music festival pretty much everyone loves music pretty much everyone sometimes loves festivals and some people love putting the two together into a music festival

There’s something so wonderful about the electricity in the air the feeling of being in a crowd United with a sole purpose and that sole purpose is to just vibe and everyone is just excited to hear some good tunes but sometimes going to an actual music festival is hard they

Might be far away they might cost a lot of money they might even be on an island and not exist but there’s a new kind of music festival that’s rising in popularity and that’s the virtual music festival minecraft music festivals like mine gala fire fest 2019 not that fire

Fest whole chela and nother men are online music festivals out of taking place in Minecraft and with pretty great success and these concerts can have more people in attendance than regular in-person music concerts if we take a look at the numbers we can see that these concerts are pulling stadium

Crowds if not more so it really is the case that these concerts can have more people in attendance than regular in-person music concerts and oftentimes they can be just as fun and I mean you have to admit there’s just something so hilarious about listening to American football play a set while their avatars

In Minecraft jump around a stage now virtual music festivals have been around for a while the first one was held by a band called severe tire damage in 1990 there’s also the Tibetan freedom concert produced by mark Scarpa which was held in 1996 and led by Adam the

Ouch of The Beastie Boys it was a concert held to raise awareness about Tibetan sovereignty and had huge acts like Bjork Rage Against the Machine Beck Sonic Youth and the Red Hot Chili Peppers the name a few but it wasn’t streamed exclusively online it was just a live broadcast of

An actual concert held in San Francisco even now because we all have to stay inside and musicians have to cancel touring to avoid large crowds some concerts have decided to move to an online space other concerts on the other hand like the One World together at home concert featuring Lady Gaga Billy

Eyelash and Elton John have just been recently created to be held in an online setting so these are all really cool and they make hearing music in a live setting more accessible than ever but they’re lacking in one crucial ingredient the engagement it’s one thing to be listening to live music alone on

Your couch with your stained PJs and a bucket of ben and jerry’s in your lap but it’s another to engage with the music jump around to it dance to it and share that experience in a group of other people but sometimes that just can’t happen and arguably the group

Experience is one of the most important aspects of a concert that’s where minecraft comes in instead of dragging yourself to a stinky venue to dance to music with someone’s puke on the floor you can drag yourself to your stinky computer and put your virtual self in a virtual room with other

Virtual people to dance the music to with virtual puke on a virtual floor so here’s how that works the group that organizes the events open-pit sends out a link that takes you to a stream that plays the actual music be that on some site or on Twitch more recently while

Having the stream open and listening to the music you join a minecraft server that the event organizers create that’s where all the people go a custom handcrafted stage with themed set design that was built with love and affection by the event organisers is already waiting for you and all you got to do

Now is interact with other people doing the same and have some fun these minecraft festivals function a lot like regular music festivals there’s a stage there’s a theme there’s set design around the stage there’s a coat-check that lets you switch channels in the server there’s people head-banging and of course the

Option to buy merchandise there pits for you to dance and mingle in and other places to stand back and relax if you want a more laid-back experience or if you want you can just tune into the stream and enjoy the show from there these concerts can have thousands of

People in the server and even more tuning in to the stream and from a technical point of view that’s kind of astounding people have to be split into different channels on the server just to reduce the strain because minecraft servers aren’t really made to handle that many people using them at one time

I was really curious to find out how these concerts could even function so I reached out to you on Twitter he’s a music producer and one of the key figures in organizing and planning these minecraft concerts to learn a bit more about the behind the scenes and how

These things are put together and he told me that these concerts require a lot of behind-the-scenes coding and software design from their team especially from someone like a mine coder that’s someone who can mod and manipulate Minecrafts code to allow for concerts like this to actually take

Place I mean these guys are pretty much changing the game to do what they want because they have to push the limits for it to work he also told me a bit about how the event is organized now Amuro says the team does a mix of working with a lot of

People they know and also reaching out to other artists they also like to highlight artists in the community that’s been growing around their events that means you’ll see a wide range of people performing at these concerts like Charli XCX 100 gex cara cara bonito and Anamanaguchi but also artists from the

Underground scene and as a result you get this really interesting showcase of artists from all over the place the format itself attracts a lot of electronic artists naturally but that hasn’t stopped bands and artists who use live instruments from playing and I have to say attending a concert myself and

Talking to you I really did notice the emphasis on commune and accessibility in these concerts and that’s what seems like a lot of the philosophy that guides these concerts line up posters will be ordered alphabetically and no one’s name is smaller or larger which puts every performer on an even playing field and

That’s pretty different from how lineup posters are usually done where you see the headlining acts have their names and huge text and then everyone beneath them in like three point font on top of that attendance in the server is completely free and you can optionally donate to a

Good cause if you want to there absolutely is something awesome and thrilling in its own right about going to these virtual minecraft concerts and truthfully there are certain things you can do in these concerts that you just can’t do in a regular show I mean there’s just the possibility for

Creativity on a whole other level here you can have out of these world sets you can show up in a I mean hell you could show up in a Mario costume if you want if you guys are interested in going to a Minecraft festival yourself to experience it there’s gonna be one held

On April 24th 2020 attendance is free you can donate to a good cause if you want bring your friends jump around into minecraft mosh pit see some awesome performers I’ll be there in attendance to give it a shot I also want to extend a big thanks to roof for answering all

My questions and giving you more info on how these things work thank you hi thanks so much for watching I hope you enjoyed that and I appreciate it if you made it this far I’m pretty fascinated about this topic and I was curious to know you guys thoughts so I asked on

Twitter what you thought about virtual concerts and if you would go to one and these are some of the answers I got so there were a few replies that kind of hit at one of the most obvious aspects of this whole digital concert thing and that’s that we are all in quarantine so

I mean we kind of can’t go to regular concert so this is kind of the next best thing some people said they would only go to digital concerts if they had to like during quarantine but some people were cool with it and they said quarantine is just an excuse to go to

More digital concerts some people wanted me to perform my own album in a digital setting and into that I’ll just say it’s not off the table there were also some pretty polarizing opinions about the human interaction aspect so there were comments like anything to have some kind

Of human interaction and then there were comments like nah and I guess it really boils down to what you define by human interaction you don’t want to be bumping shoulders with people in a mosh pit then that’s totally cool but on the other hand if you’re recognizing that there is

Someone behind the Minecraft avatar that is clipping through you maybe that’ll do it this was pretty interesting there were a few comparisons to live-streaming and that’s a very good point because there have been some cases someone else pointed out of artists like Rex orange county just holding concerts in their

Bedroom or whatever which I don’t think is anything new there are people like dojo cat who just stream from their bedroom a lot of the time but it seems like this whole quarantine thing has given artists an excuse to do more of that Elliott says to be fair I wouldn’t

Mind watching Freddie Gibbs rap over some Mad Libs beats while cooking up munch for his kids I completely agree I want to see this happen immediately I want to see what he cooks for his kids also I don’t know why about Freddie Gibbs gives me mac and

Cheese vibes like if he’s gonna cook for his kids I just see him cooking mac and cheese so it seems like people really don’t want to pay money to go to a virtual concert and I I can understand that completely I think that’s why a lot of these

Minecraft concerts have been free entry and then you can donate to a good cause like a charity if you want to but at the same time I wouldn’t be opposed to paying to go to a virtual concert I think it really depends on what the concert is doing for me if the concert

Is doing things that I can’t see anywhere else like on YouTube or whatever then I wouldn’t mind paying a bit there were some people that were straight up here to go and brought up that they would only go to a virtual concert if there were virtual snacks and

I gotta agree like my virtual tummy is hungies dude so I think that’ll just about do it for now once again thank you guys so much for watching I appreciate you I hope you’re staying safe and I’ll see you again soon