By Aidan Weiss
On April 23 through April 25, Travis Scott, an American rapper, held one of the largest concerts in history. It was not like any other concert; it was a virtual concert held within a video game. At the moment, a lot of industries have taken a big hit, and one is the music industry. A lot of artist's income comes from traveling the world and performing to hundreds of thousands of fans. Still, because of shelter in place and restrictions set around the globe, music artists do not have the opportunity to perform. Some artists have been playing music through social media, but it will never equate to the team-up of Travis Scott and Fortnite. Travis worked with the popular free-to-play battle royale to put on a spectacular virtual concert that saw a staggering 12.3 million log into the game to get involved in the fun. Hundreds of thousands more watched on as streamers aired the performance live on Twitch and YouTube. The concert was fun, colorful, and insane according to some of the biggest streamers in the world. Although the show was about ten minutes long and only lasted four days, across three days, 27.7 million unique gamers attended the digital gig 45.8 million times. Travis Scott set record-breaking numbers, but what does this mean for other virtual concerts?
Other artists and companies are trying to find a way to replicate concerts to the same effect as Travis's Forntote Concert. Something of such a feat, like the Travis concert, takes several months to create and execute. But where the money will come from is another question. Artists and their labels have typically relied on brands or platforms to fund their digital experiments. For virtual concerts to catch on in a meaningful way, they'll have to begin at least to replace the billions of dollars that the music industry is losing without any live revenue. For artists who don't have Travis Scott's clout or budget, navigating these new virtual spaces comes with its own financial and creative challenges. If the resources are there, and if the fanbase is large enough, many more virtual concerts are soon to come.