This Week: Is it possible that the virtual museum experience could beat the in-person visit?… After ten years, mixed verdict on whether HD streaming builds arts audiences… We need a new definition of selling music to reflect new audience realities… Will Pokemon Go change the ways we use public spaces?… We may have just seen Facebook streaming video’s breakthrough moment.
- Is This App Really A Better Experience Than The Actual Museum? Google releases a new app that lets you explore museums. You can see all the information about the museum itself. Then click on any image and go inside. Examine it close up. Find out its history and about the artists. Find out how it relates to other art, artists and movements. It’s heresy of course – it certainly doesn’t replace the experience of being in the same room with the art. On the other hand, how much of a pleasure is it being in an overcrowded gallery jostled and unable to get close. So what will be the relationship between virtual and the in-person art experience?
- A Decade In, Do HD-Casts Of Arts Events Help Or Hurt The Arts? Ten years ago the Metropolitan Opera’s pioneering streaming of its operas to movie theatres around the world suggested a way to reach vast new audiences. Since then, numerous other arts companies have tried streaming, but the Met is still the most successful at it. But what does success actually mean? The Met’s movie-casts are expensive, and the jury is still out on whether they help build audiences. “Like so much new media in this era of rapid technological change, the HD broadcasts haven’t actually fulfilled the rosy expectations that once surrounded them. It is far from clear that they are the wave of the future.”
- We have To Redefine What “Selling” Music Looks Like: Traditionally we define it as selling a recording – an LP, a CD, and then a download. But maybe we need to rethink about what a sale of music looks like. “To take an academic look at music marketing, the traditional ‘sale’ was usually somewhere near the end of a customer experience journey: awareness, discovery, interest, interaction, purchase, use, cultivation, and advocacy. Now we have a situation where the ‘play’ is conceivably part of every step. So thinking holistically, if we view ‘experience’ as the product of a record label now, we need a way to measure it effectively, and that’s why it feels like there is a data ‘arms race’ going on at the moment.”
- Will Games Like Pokemon Go! Change The Way People Relate To Public Spaces? So far there are suggestions they will. Embedding virtual worlds atop real places (augmented reality) and then giving players opportunities to see their surroundings in different contexts inevitably changes the ways they see those spaces and use them. And this one game is only the first example. “The game gives users a heightened appreciation both for public space and the architectural and historical landmarks in their city. Apparently, so many players have flocked to the National Mall in Washington DC that the National Park Service has encouraged rangers to help people find Pokémon, and learn about historical monuments in the process.”
- The App That Could Kill TV News: Facebook’s new live-streaming feature brings an immediacy to live events that TV news cameras are seldom in a position to capture. Diamond Reynolds, who streamed live video on FB right after her boyfriend Philando Castile was shot by police, showed the world something it hadn’t seen before. “I think we saw last week that Facebook Live could become the most intelligent cable news network ever built,” said Jonathan Klein, a former president of CNN, who now runs a digital media company called Tapp. With more than 1.65 billion users, he said, “Facebook effectively has one and a half billion news bureaus to capture news, and they’re capable of doing things that a cable news network could only dream of doing.”
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