
How Gorillaz could dominate a post-Covid world - karanke
https://reframing.substack.com/p/how-gorillaz-could-thrive-in-a-post
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robbrown451
I think you mean "Gorillaz type bands" or something. And even that...

Live shows will certainly be impacted, but to think that you need bands to
become virtual characters is kind of extreme. The Beatles were purely a studio
band for much of the time they dominated. That's nothing new.

Multitrack recording has been around forever, so recording your part at home
isn't that big a deal, especially now that home equipment has gotten so
affordable. (note that the winner of the grammy for best engineer last year,
Finneas, did it on a few thousand dollars worth of equipment in his bedroom).
So much music now is created on a computer more than on an instrument, so
that's becoming a big factor. Even if you play it onto an electronic piano,
you can tweak to your heart's content after the fact. (and you can play at
slow speed, you can play right and left hand parts separately, you can loop,
you can play in a different key and transpose, etc).

You sure don't have to go full Gorillaz to do any of this. They are an
interesting extreme, but beyond that....

One of the big problems, though, is that many musicians have a lot of trouble
making money off their recordings, especially with so many people just
listening on YouTube etc. There isn't the incentive to buy a record as there
was a few decades ago.

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zitterbewegung
I think there is a bigger subset for "virtual idols" in Japan that have
already existed. They have also automated the singing part (see the Vocaloid
Hatsune Miku). And they already have had concerts where people attend. Also
they have started making "virtual YouTuber" (Kizuna_AI). This would all go to
the point of just starting to make an AR/VR type of experience rather quickly.

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inawarminister
Yeah, Kizuna AI-like Vtubers are flourishing in Japan and several other
countries now. I'm only familiar with Hololive, but their streams reach 100k
live viewers periodically with all the world's languages presented in their
chats. There are also international chapters in China and Indonesia, and also
a worldwide English audition just finished up recently. 'Independent' vtubers
and 'Networked' (Hololive, Nijisanji) are also performing ads in radios and
promoting themselves in Akihabara. It's dizzling.

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vikingcaffiene
As a musician who came up with the touring model, I've been struggling with
not being able to gig and connect with people. There's a real visceral
phenomenon that happens when you play live. I think it's fair to say those
days were waning even before COVID.

I found the sentiment of this article comforting. It points to a way forward
to make music and get some of that connection back. I don't know that there's
any substitute for the real deal but that's probably because I'm old. ;)

~~~
coldtea
I don't think replacing direct connection / presence with remote viewing /
tele-presence is "progress".

Those two are different things. We could say that one is not better than the
other, it depends on the use case.

But one can also say that we're wired evolutionary for the direct presence,
and the other case is a 10-30 years affair that we're rushing into often when
it's not really needed (like now with COVID) but just because it's new (or
because other things, like ticket prices or free time, are fucked up).

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sargun
I would be sad if Gorillaz never performed live again. I’ve seen their live
shows and they were truly epic in size. They had 50+ people on stage, and an
awesome video mix.

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DizzyDoo
Gorillaz's recent success this year with their Song Machine project has, I
think, largely been because their recent songs have been some of the best
material they've ever produced. Personal opinions vary, of course, but their
four main releases this year have all been excellent and are probably among my
favourite tracks of theirs.

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mindcube
My band has been doing a completely virtual tour on twitch for the past two
weeks. It seems like this platform was seemingly made for bands. The fact that
we could generate a modest revenue stream for performing could potentially
replace the money we would make from touring in the physical world. Very
excited about the future potential of live, virtual platforms for music! We
will continue streaming on a weekly basis after our "virtual tour" is
complete, but we're stoked with the results we've had so far!

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hyperindexed
Virtual concerts are becoming all the rage in MMORPGs, and other digital
venues... [https://kotaku.com/watch-hatsune-miku-perform-live-in-
phanta...](https://kotaku.com/watch-hatsune-miku-perform-live-in-phantasy-
star-online-1843561653)

~~~
082349872349872
I'm more impressed that somehow Hatsune Miku was doing live concerts?
Unfortunately it doesn't look like she play Wales; they'd love her there.

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mhh__
I "attended" the Fortnite Travis Scott event; I was actually quite impressed.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYeFAlVC8qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYeFAlVC8qU)
(undersells it because it's a cinematic view not how you actually see it in
game)

It reminded me of demoscene programs in a way although not as intellectually
stimulating. It's early days for the medium but as VR gets cheaper I can't see
why it won't become a normal thing in the west to have virtual gigs (I think
people around me wouldn't be surprised if they saw something like it in Asia
already)

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shrugthug
Can you describe what this experience is like for the attendees? Are all of
the attendees transported into all of these environments with full control of
their character given constraints like being underwater, flying through the
air, etc? I've played video games my entire life, but not Fortnite, so I find
this absolutely fascinating as a future medium.

~~~
mhh__
You wait in a loaded area and then the game locks you into an area of the map
then the enormous Travis Scott figure appears and dances about.

You can still move around in the game but the game applies external forces to
you to throw you around and put you in the different environments etc.

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chrisweekly
Related tangent: what's the state-of-the-art for reasonably low-latency /
time-synced, networked multi-user audio? eg for multiplayer music "games"?

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bbarn
Maybe Dethklok will come back again too.

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jbrooksuk
I think companies such as MelodyVR are going to be pretty big because of the
effects of COVID-19.

It’s an interesting problem-space and it’ll take a while for people to
acclimatise to the changes, but I think we’ll start to see a lot of this.

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lostgame
I used to love these guys, however, recently they seem to be headed farther
and farther away from both the sound of and the innovation present in their
first two records.

I miss the trip hop, I miss the ‘edge’. It’s basically Damon Albarn’s synth
pop at the moment. I feel like he should be releasing records such as ‘The Now
Now’ under his own name. I’d still listen and I’d probably appreciate it more.

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twic
I would suggest titling this article 'Planet of the Gorillaz'.

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aforty
Is this real and not sarcasm?

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vijaybritto
I don't think this claim will stand once the covid vaccines land in our
pharmacies. The world will be back to normal though work environment might be
changed for a lot of jobs

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seesawtron
Took me longer than anticipated to figure out whether the article was about
the animal Gorilla or some techn platform called with the same name.

~~~
tropdrop
The 'z' is important.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillaz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillaz)

