Driving Concerts Into The Electronic Interactive

Now, being lazy is no longer an excuse not to see Matt Nathanson, or any other band. Thanks to Deep Rock Drive, you can now see concerts right on your laptop, most of them for free.

Trying to mesh the "excitement of live shows with the interactivity of online vigeogames," the new site hopes you'll log in and interact electronically with the band through shout outs and EmotApplauses like kiss-blown lips and lighters.

This sounds like a pretty cool idea, including being able to choose different audio mixes and camera angles, but from the looks of it, this type of interactive media can never replace a real concert from both the fan's and band's perspective.

As a fan, the sound is now only as good as A) your speakers and B) your bandwidth. If either of those are anything but pristine, then all the interactivity in the world isn't going to make it for a good concert-going experience. Just because they might actually play the song you request doesn't make up for a 56k tin-sounding show. And even if you do have a T3 line, laptop speakers aren't going to cut it either.

From a band's point of view, having a live crowd is incredibly exhilarating and can be a huge factor into feeding into the band's energy. Unless they are streaming an actual concert at a real venue, then this just becomes a studio session at a TV station. If I were playing at one of these sessions, the 40 big screens displaying the shout outs and EmotApplause wouldn't really be enough. Maybe some sort of applause or yelling that simulated a real crowd could come one, directly affected by the amount of positive or negative feedback generated from the mentioned interactions.

However, with that said, this looks to be a viable type of media and concert substitute for possibly sold out show or one too far away to attend. I'm pretty sure I'll be checking out the Matt Nathanson show, free thanks to a Pepsi sponsorship, though I don't know much about many of the other acts (check out the line-up here).

More Info:
Wired's Take
The Plugg's Take