Fans of live music soon won’t have to leave their homes to get access to a massive number of live experiences, thanks to a new partnership between production companies Live Nation and NextVR.
The companies will work together to shoot and stream hundreds of live concerts starting this summer, making their available to owners of Oculus Rift and Samsung Gear VR headsets. The company plans to expand to other VR app stores, such as that of the HTC Vive, soon after its initial launch.
Here’s the kicker: At first, all programming will be free.
“NextVR is planning to bring quite a few acts to the platform at no cost and initially — all programming will be free. Pay-for-view programs will likely follow — at a time determined by NextVR and Live Nation,” said a NextVR spokesperson in an interview with Variety.
This is a multiyear deal that NextVR executives likely hope will cement the company as the frontrunner in the world of live virtual reality production, not that they already didn’t have an upper hand in the industry. The tech startup recently raised $30.5 million in Series A funding from cable conglomerates including Time Warner and Comcast.
It makes sense that cable and event companies would want to partner with a virtual reality producers to cover live events. As the VR market grows, immersive home viewing experiences will need to grow with it. Plus, pay-per-view dollars could prove extremely lucrative for big-name artists and large events for which fans have a hard time getting tickets.
The companies have yet to put forth a full concert schedule, but have announced that the first event will take place this summer. Live Nation produces 25,000 live events each year, so the companies should have plenty of shows to choose from.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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