"With live shows slowly returning, we’re seeing a fundamental contradiction play out: Even as livestreaming platforms continue to raise more funds and announce marquee celebrity partnerships, demand for music livestreams has gone down significantly from its peak last year" - Cherie Hu looks at the (last year's) promising new live music domain. "There are two possible reasons for this stagnation. One is that music livestreams just haven’t really innovated as a format to the point where fans are continually willing to pay for them... Maybe fans are just more interested in seeing these artists perform in person".

"Concerts in real life have various constraints like budgets, the chance of accidents, space limitations, etc. But when it comes to a virtual world, there are none. If you have a crazy idea, you can get it implemented. And this widens the scope of how musical concerts can be done and how artists can interact with fans" - metaverse enthusiast E2Analyst writes in the Medium after seeing Ariana Grande perform in Fortnite.

Despite the return of music festivals, virtual events are here to stay according to new data published by United Talent Agency, the LA Times reports. Three out of four people attended an online event during the pandemic. Of those who participated in a virtual event, 88% said they plan to do so again even when in-person gatherings return. The survey indicated that people are "most excited" for sporting events, concerts and movies.

“There was a 360 portal and you could go step on stage with them, and you could pick your camera angles” - Christian Guirnalda, director of Verizon’s 5G Labs, told Rolling Stone about the recent Black Pumas show, recorded at company's Los Angeles 5G Labs. Producers filmed in 4K video on a camera connected to Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network, which can create a “visually lossless” experience that “eliminates the side effects of image compression that’s visible to the naked eye”. There was no postproduction, either - all the visuals were rendered in real time. Rolling Stone believes this is the future, even after the live shows return.

280 upcoming bands - including Indigo Sparke, Shannen James, Chubby and the Gang, and Black Country, New Road - performed last week at the online edition of South by Southwest. The bands performed from their living rooms and backyards. Paste Magazine was at the (web)site to witness a "smooth, yet strange virtual event that, by streamlining the festival experience, necessarily sapped it of all the chaotic energy and excitement that makes live music (let alone festivals) so irreplaceable". The New York Times says SXSW "came back with a genuine joy".

Northern California singer-songwriter Jenna Mammina began hosting twice-daily webcast/livestreaming events on March 23, 2020, and hasn’t missed a single day since she started, which amounts to 730 unique shows in one year. She calls these live-streams “11:11 with Jenna” - with a new episode debuting daily at 11:11 a.m. and a totally different one following at 11:11 p.m. (those are New York Times, meaning that's 4:11 PM and 4:11 AM in Rome, and in Singapore the 11:11 AM episode is at 11:11 PM and the 11:11 PM is at 11:11 AM). She hosts these shows via Zoom and people can join in by visiting Facebook.com/Jenna.Mammina. She plans to continue indefinitely, as she's told the Mercury News - "I never want to stop. I love the community that we have created, the inner connectivity with people all over the world. I’m ready to keep going for as long as it stays in line with my life".

Isol-Aid started in March as a one-off festival, but the success of the first one gave organizers strength to continue. It has since grown into a weekly event, with an average of four artists performing, Guardian reports. It has since hosted 881 artists, resulted in record deals, evolved to a paid gig (to compensate the artists), with around 35,000 viewers on average tuning in each week. Bigger artists like Julia Jacklin, Stella Donnelly, and Middle Kids appear alongside lesser-known, like health-care workers doing music as a hobby. It's streamed on TikTok, where performers stream on their own account and then direct audiences to the next act, as well as on Isol-Aid.com. On Sunday, March 21, line-up consists of Jaguar Jonze, Hockey Dad, Julia Stone, and Isaiah Firebrace.

“We’re approaching things by saying, ‘Let’s not even pretend that we’re trying to replace the live club experience’” - James Minor, who oversees SXSW Music, says to Texas Monthly about this year's edition of the famous festival. Instead of bringing 45-minute sets as part of an six-hour event at a club, each showcase will be a single hour of entertainment, because “people’s attention spans are a lot shorter online”, Minor says. There are no big-name headliners this year, he says, instead, this year’s festival will be focused on launching the careers of artists who’ve struggled with getting attention during the pandemic. “It’s supposed to be the coming-out party for what happens next in music" - Minor explains. Some of the bands who are going to perform are English new rock stars Black Country, New Road, country artists Jade Jackson and Aubrie Sellers who will perform together, Danish heavy metal heavyweights Iceage, Montreal shoegazers No Joy... SXSW 2021 is due March 16-21.

American singer-songwriter Todd Rundgren has embarked on a virtual tour of 25 American cities which is broadcast from the same Chicago stage, but geo-targeted to different regional markets, Variety reports. Shows come with visual cues saluting the would-be host towns and multiple shout-outs to the virtually targeted city. The focus is on making each show a unique event, with a virtual perimeter that will restrict viewing of a particular show to audience members who live there. Prior to shows, there’s the sound of murmuring people looking for their seats, and for every city on the video wall behind the band there'll be a picture of the actual proscenium stage. This virtual tour runs February through March. Tickets go for $35.

Manchester Orchestra have just premiered 'A Black Mile To The Surface: The Global Concert Film' which saw the band perform their most recent album - 2017's 'A Black Mile to the Surface' - live in its entirety in Echo Mountain Recording in Asheville, NC, the same location that they recorded the album. The sound is great, as well as the band and the songs (from their, probably, best album).