When Apple unveiled its new $3,500 Vision Pro virtual reality headset last week, the bottom line was clear: The future, whether people like it or not, is no longer knocking on the door but in the living room. (If you can afford one, that is.) The immersive, 3D experience offered by the headset — and those from other companies, like Meta — is a test of where technology can go and how humanity can interact through of advancing technology.
But while early reviews focused on Vision Pro's relative lackluster, graphics quality and how it works, the potential of VR technology is exciting when applied to music — particularly the idea of 3D, immersive concert experiences. While these types of experiences have existed conceptually for a few years, now — with the company AmazeVR being one of the launch apps on Vision Pro (and also available on Meta headsets) — they're in people's homes.
Founded in 2015, AmazeVR made waves in 2021 after partnering with Roc Nation to produce a Megan Thee Stallion VR concert tour, which aired at AMC theaters in twelve cities across the country. He also partnered with K-pop label SM Entertainment for a similar 3D concert experience with the group aespa. But for the past two and a half years, AmazeVR has been working on launching its app with the Vision Pro headset — and later this month, on February 28, it will unveil a new immersive concert experience with the band Avenged Sevenfold that will, according to creative director of AmazeVR Lance Drake, to be “our most dynamic and triple-Awesome show to date.” The new release helps Drake win his title Advertising sign's Executive of the Week.
Drake has been directing music videos for over a decade, having worked with Miike Snow, Steve Angello and Muse. He also directed the Muse IMAX concert film Simulation Theorywhich came out in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic and which led to what he himself called a bit of an existential crisis as a director, leading him to virtual reality.
“The reason I decided to do VR was because the Muse videos I made were adapted by Microsoft into VR games, and they took those adaptations on tour as a VIP experience, and I saw fans of our videos actually interact with the music videos that I had built, the worlds that we had built and the stories, and I said, 'Wait a minute, there's something here,'” says Drake. “So when this opportunity with Amaze happened, everything aligned: It's music-driven, it's artist-driven, and what we're doing is like a hybrid between a live concert, a music video, and a game.”
Here, Drake discusses AmazeVR's work in virtual reality and spatial video, the musical connections that are starting to make the technology viable for artists, and the possibilities for moving forward. “I think having just spent a decade in music videos, and I feel like 2D has reached the ceiling of what people expect and how it's just a promotional tool, I see what we're doing now — and spatial and VR content in general — as a new medium for musicians and visual creatives to transcend the two dimensions,” he says. “Once you're seeing content in 3D and it's in your room and it's part of your life in a physical manifestation, it becomes much more meaningful and has more value to it.”
This week, Apple released its new Vision Pro VR headset, and AmazeVR Concerts was released as one of the headset's music-centric apps. What can you do with the Amaze app?
We're having a Vision Pro launch day as we've been working in the space for the past two and a half years. We create virtual reality concerts — we shoot the world's greatest musicians in stereo video and place them in fully immersive CG environments and give users and fans the closest performance they'll ever experience. The artists are photo-realistic, introducing you to the craziest CG-driven world imaginable. There are interactive moments. And for the last two and a half years we've been building the VR concert, which is basically four songs by one artist and an intermission in the middle, and it plays a little bit like a standard concert, but it's 3D, the user is fully in the world with the artist, and it's the most close show you will ever have in your life. When they play, they look at you and talk to you.
How long have you been doing this?
I have been working with AmazeVR for two and a half years. We started with HottieVerse with Megan Thee Stallion, which was our launch. We partnered with AMC and got her show on the road to theaters and fans could get a glimpse of the future and buy tickets. We played in 12 different cities, sold out most locations and then grew from there. Since then we've done five shows and we've been working on the technology, keeping the budget down. The Megan Thee Stallion project had a life cycle of about a year from creation to premiere, and since then we've been doing shows on two month life cycles.
What was your experience with Megan's project like and what did you learn from it?
I think the big lesson was that the market just wasn't where it is now. We're on a real cliffhanger with the launch of Vision Pro. At the time Megan came out, two years ago, we had to come to the fans, we had to create a space where the fans could go to a movie theater and a lot of times — and that was the blessing of this show — for a lot of people. , their first time trying VR was with our experience because they were fans of Megan and had this unique opportunity to do something different in VR. But now we're at a point where sales of the Meta headphones have been growing exponentially since then, and now Apple has entered the ring, and since then we've been hyper-focused on launching our own app, so we've got our own app on Meta and now on Vision Pro. So we're now kind of ahead of the game because we've been shooting spatial content and building these worlds for what people want to see in VR for over two years.
You also have a collaboration with K-pop label SM Entertainment, right?
Our company founders are Korean, engineering geniuses and have been working in VR for almost a decade. So we have deep ties in the K-pop industry and have a partnership with SM. And the first show we started with was aespa. Similarly, we did a theater show in South Korea, which went really well, and the second show [with] Kai just happened through SM [and will be out in South Korea Feb. 14]. And we will continue to expand and grow in the K-pop market, especially in the theater market, because the fans are very hungry and willing there for that kind of content.
You also have a new project with Avenged Sevenfold coming out later this month. What can you tell me about it?
Avenged Sevenfold is definitely our most dynamic and triple-Awesome show to date. What makes it stand out is that we were able to film all five band members actually live. We got their whole tour band, their backline, and they were on stage with us and we did a full recording of them playing live on a soundstage, which to my knowledge hasn't been done in spatial, 3D video. We're really excited because it really brings the musicianship to the fore. Brian [Synster Gates] and Zackey [Vengeance] playing guitar, you see every note they play, you see the vocal performance, and that's what makes spatial video so special — it gives the user permission to look wherever they want. So you can really focus on the drums, you can really see that particular guitar solo, and it really brings that element of performance and musicianship back to the fore with this show.
What are some of the complications that have yet to be worked out with music and this technology?
It's more about getting the word out and getting people on board. The artists we've worked with — from T-Pain, who is active on Twitch and the digital world. Zara Larsson, who had a huge Roblox show; and Avenged Sevenfold, who are very into cryptocurrencies and NFTs and Web3 — it took those kinds of artists to invest in us and understand and want to be on the frontier of that. But now that we've entered a world where Apple is in the game, I think it's going to be a lot easier for artists to understand what we're trying to make, and we also had to make a version of every kind of music to then show artists about to see how it applies to them. It was hard for us to take a Megan Thee Stallion show to play rock and say, “We want to do this for you.” It really took us to flesh out each genre and what this VR concert would look like. But now we've done pop, k-pop, hip-hop and now rock. I think it will be much easier for older artists to see how this applies to them.
Where do you see it going from here?
What's most exciting about Apple's release is that it's not just a viewer, but a creative tool. There are built-in cameras, it will be much easier to be social with this handset and for users to create this content. I really see it as a new medium, a new genre. For years, especially in the music space, music videos have been a dying art. are becoming less and less popular, and much more visual focus has been given to TikTok. I see this as a new ceiling for creativity and a new bar for fans to invest in and get closer to their favorite artists.
