Music's Augmented Future
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thereport ISSUE 410 | 17 OCTOBER 2017 Music’s augmented future 1 ISSUE 410 17.10.17 COVERAR SPECIAL FEATURE PART 1 AR you experienced? he first thing to understand about Cycle report alongside technologies like Kingston; in the years since there have been particularly around its potential to become augmented reality (AR) technology microblogging, social networking platforms a steady stream of experiments around music truly mainstream. There are several reasons is that while it may be a hot trend of and 3D printing. and AR. You can read about some of them for this, starting with 2016’s big app craze: 2017, it’s certainly not a new trend. 2008 was also the year when Apple and later in this issue. Pokémon Go (pictured). TSci-fi author William Gibson was writing Google launched their first app stores for In the years after 2008, many of these While catching virtual beasties in real- about the idea of augmenting humans’ vision smartphones, with startups like Layar and campaigns have, with hindsight (and often world locations also seemed gimmicky at first with digital content in 1994, although arguably Metaio early to experiment with “browser” even at the time) seemed like gimmicks; – the mobile game raced to $500m of revenue head-up displays (HUDs) in aircraft were the apps that overlaid information onto the good for getting a few headlines when they and then $1bn. Even in April 2017, there were first example of AR decades before that. phone’s camera feed. launched, then quickly forgotten with no still 65m active players globally, and for many report AR as we understand it in 2017 has been By 2009, Music Ally was writing about AR obvious impact on sales or fan engagement. of them the game was their first introduction a buzz since 2008, when it was a new entry marketing campaigns for artists like Eminem, The wider tech world is getting very to AR technology. in research firm Gartner’s annual Hype John Mayer, Simian Mobile Disco and Sean excited about AR again in 2017, though, Another trend driving the current buzz the 2 ISSUE 410 17.10.17 AR SPECIAL PART 1 Earlier this month, he told the Independent that Apple sees parallels between the explosion of apps after 2008 and what it hopes ARKit will do now for AR. “Think back to 2008, when the App Store went live. There was the initial round of apps and people looked at them and said, ‘this is not anything, mobile apps are not going to around AR is its use in social apps like take off’. And then step by step things start to Snapchat and Instagram, with the former’s move,“ Cook said. lenses and the latter’s face filters offering “It is sort of a curve, it was just exponential a range of comic special effects to jazz up – and now you couldn’t imagine your life people’s selfie photos and videos. without apps. Your health is on one app, your With 173m and 500m daily active users financials, your shopping, your news, your respectively, Snapchat and Instagram entertainment – it’s everything. AR is like that. have made one form of AR completely It will be that dramatic.” mainstream, although many of the people Google is following suit with its own set of joyfully flapping their dog tongues or dancing developer tools for Android under the banner with a cartoon hot dog are unlikely to even of ARCore, first released in a preview edition recognise the term “augmented reality”. for developers in August. “We’re targeting In late 2017, there are also the respective 100m devices at the end of the preview,” strategies of Google and Apple to consider. announced Google at the time. “ARCore is Some 2.4bn people globally are now using our next step in bringing AR to everyone.” smartphones according to research firm Google is also working on its own AR app eMarketer, while IDC estimates that Android called Google Lens, which will launch later and iPhone account for 99.7% of new this year. It’s like a visual Shazam: people will smartphone shipments between them. Both be able to point their smartphone’s camera are betting big on AR. at the real world – landmarks, book covers, Apple has a feature called ARKit in its restaurants, flowers and so on – and get recently released iOS 11 software. It contains relevant information back. a set of tools making it easier for developers It’s visual search, essentially, and will make to create AR apps, with dozens having been its debut in Google’s new Pixel 2 smartphones released since iOS 11’s debut in September. this Autumn, with a wider rollout to other CEO Tim Cook has been talking regularly Android devices ahead. Again, this isn’t about the importance and potential of AR in a technology (augmented reality) being the last 18 months. “AR can be really great, promoted, but a use for it that could appeal and we have been and continue to invest a beyond the tech early adopters. and our readers the question is whether that what’s happening in the wider AR market; lot in this,” Cook told analysts in July 2016. Between Google, Apple, Snapchat, means real opportunity for the music industry outlining some of the bullish analyst report “We are high on AR for the long run. We think Facebook/Instagram and urban-roaming rather than just more gimmicks. predictions for the space; and looking back there are great things for customers and a Pikachus, there’s a significant push to take In this month’s Report, we’ll try to answer to some of the best (and most ridiculous) great commercial opportunity.” AR into the mainstream. But for Music Ally that question, while providing a primer on examples of AR music in the past. :) the 3 ISSUE 410 AR SPECIAL PART 2 17.10.17 Data dive AR NUMBERS TO CONJURE WITH “I think AR is big and profound,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook in August. But how big? Research frms and analysts have been grappling with the challenge of predicting users, hardware sales and content revenues for augmented reality for nearly a decade. Most are still, frankly, pulling numbers out of the air. Here are some of the more useful stats around the emerging AR market. 1.9bn The amount of unique monthly active users for mobile 4.1m AR by 2022 according to research frm Tractica. That Annual shipments of consumer AR headsets by 2021 according to research frm IDC. would be up from an estimated 342.8m users in 2016. That would be up from 4.1m in 2016, so average annual growth (or compound “Mobile AR will power one of the next great user annual growth – CAGR) of 139.7% over that period. interface applications – visual search,” explained analyst Marc Beccue. $3.6bn The market value of augmented-reality devices – headsets 47% The percentage of iPhone and iPad owners who’d upgraded their devices’ and smart glasses – by 2018 according to research frm software to iOS 11 three weeks after its release in mid-September. Important for AR, CCS Insight. That’s up from just $300m in 2015, because iOS 11 is required to run the new wave of ARKit apps. driven by logistics, design, medicine and education. $1.89bn $12.9bn The total amount of funding raised by Magic Leap so far. That’s spread across four rounds including $50m Series A in Expected worldwide spending on AR headsets/glasses February 2014; $542m in October 2014; $793.5m in February 2016 and $500m in and AR content in 2020 according to Greenlight Insights. September 2017. Products released in that time: 0. It reckons $7.1bn of that will be device revenue, while $5.8bn will be from content. It expects the total-spending fgure to balloon to $36.4bn by 2023. 65m The number of monthly active players globally of Pokémon Go in April 2017, 10 months after the AR game launched, showing that it wasn’t just a fash 40m in the pan. In the US, comScore estimates that it peaked at 28.5m users in The number of people in the US who’ll engage July 2016, dropping to below 5m by the end of that year. with some form of augmented reality in 2017, according to eMarketer. That’s 12.3% of the 6 report American population, with the research frm The number of months it took Pokémon Go to generate $1bn of revenue, suggesting that Snapchat lenses and Facebook reaching that milestone in January 2017. Its peak earnings were in late the stories will be key drivers. July 2016 when the game grossed more than $18m of in-app-purchase spending in a single day. 4 ISSUE 410 17.10.17 AR SPECIAL PART 3 Lens flair AR is a key part of Snapchat and Instagram’s social-apps battle Our dancing hot dog is most likely ost Snapchat users didn’t think the world’s first augmented- of it as an ‘augmented reality’ app, even as they shared reality superstar...” another selfie of themselves – Evan Spiegel, Snap Inc Mwith a flapping dog tongue that was about as AR as you can get. This battle has already made AR a Snapchat’s ‘lenses’ – with the tongue part of the daily digital lives for hundreds soon joined by an array of other special of millions of people, with Snapchat effects – made it a first mover in the and Instagram both keen to continue current resurgence of AR, with tens of developing the technology.