4Mar/20Off
In the music industry’s latest hologram play, Jadu is making interactive digital video with artists to promote songs
Those who dream of dancing alongside popular musicians may finally get the chance — sort of — thanks to the latest byproduct of the music industry’s ongoing love affair with holograms.
Jadu, a Los Angeles startup that launched on Wednesday morning, is just the most recent in a music industry craze that began with the Tupac hologram at Coachella in 2012 and still isn’t stopping.
Philip Lelyveld, immersive media initiative lead at the Entertainment Technology Center, a think tank based at the University of Southern California, says holograms and augmented reality are a rising presence in the entertainment industry as a whole, adding that the music industry is moving quick but cautiously with the new tech. But the tech needs to evolve quickly to keep users’ attention, he says.
“Artists have been trying to do that in concert for years, and now they’re trying to make it a consumer connection,” Lelyveld tells Rolling Stone. “The technology is coming along rapidly, now we have to come up with the language or evolving experience that people want. If this is an extension of the artist communication, it can work beautifully. If it plays off their videos, concert tours, social media engagement, that could be really interesting. But It will evolve rapidly, people with a short attention span are going to tire of seeing the same thing more than a few times.”