Open from today, the virtual world will take fans through a curated digital environment that adapts to the songs in real time as they’re performed.
The digital project was created by teams as Sony Music UK, Columbia Records and the metaverse gaming studio, Melon, which recently received £4.2 million ($5 million) in seed funding after successfully developing Roblox concerts for the likes of KSI and Zara Larsson.
The virtual concert begins on Friday, July 29 at 5pm, with Ezra performing a recurring setlist that repeats every hour until 7am the following Monday (August 1). An avatar of Ezra will lead fans through the environment, with users also able to buy items from the ‘verch’ store – that’s a ‘virtual merch’ store, to you and me.
George Ezra said: “I can’t wait for everyone to explore the incredible experience that we’ve created around Gold Rush Kid and see the album take on exciting new forms. I’ve played shows at some incredible venues over the last few years, but this is going to be completely unique and really special. See you there!”
Virtual concerts have grown enormously in popularity over the last couple of years, first taking off during the various lockdowns – a factor which inevitably helped their development, given it was a time when genuine live shows weren’t possible.
In April 2020, a lucrative Travis Scott event took place on Fortnite, and developed by Epic Games, attracted 27.7 million unique users.
By the end of that year Roblox had their own virtual concert, this time with Lil Nas X, which had some 33 million users. Since then, numerous high-profile artists have carried out such digital gigs, from Megan Thee Stallion to Twenty One Pilots.
Bastille also recently took his No.1 album, pertinently titled Give Me The Future, into the metaverse using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine platform.
Well, Ezra has his own No.1 album from this year – and you can experience it on Roblox from this Friday. If you like that sort of thing.
