Meta Horizon Worlds, the online VR game from the company previously known as Facebook, just hosted a metaverse concert last Friday featuring the world-renowned pop star Sabrina Carpenter.
The news was announced with a clip of Sabrina dancing onstage and singing her top five song “Espresso,” which, along with other hits like “Feather,” and “Nonsense,” was performed at the 45-minute VR concert on July 19th.
The concert was hosted by Meta Horizon World’s Music Alley, a section of the metaverse dedicated to music and concerts. It was available for fans to view on Meta’s ‘Quest’ headsets, where they enjoyed an immersive, 180-degree “desert Oasis” VR concert experience and could interact with other fans via their avatars.
Produced by Meta in partnership with Gunpowder & Sky and originally filmed in Los Angeles, the concert aimed to transcend the “physical boundaries of an in-person concert.” For fans that couldn’t attend on Friday, there will be replays for the next few weeks in Meta Horizon Worlds.
Sabrina Carpenter, 25, currently has two songs in the top 10 Billboard charts, including “Espresso” and “Please, Please, Please.” She is coming off a recent performance at the Coachella Music Festival that was highly praised.
CEO Mark Zuckerburg has been bullish on the metaverse ever since he changed his company’s name to Meta back in October 2021. But it hasn’t always been clear what type of metaverse the company aimed to build. For example, in April of this year, Meta announced it was launching a new hub for its ‘Quest’ VR headsets that will give teachers access to educational apps and features, signaling a pivot towards the education sector.
If anything, the VR concert with Sabrina Carpenter shows Meta has multiple strategies of onboarding people into its virtual world. It also appears to be marketing its products more to retail users than its main competitor Apple. The starting price of a Meta Quest 3 headset is $499, while the Apple Vision Pro is currently priced at $3,499.
VR Concerts in Metaverse Worlds Persists
For Sabrina Carpenter fans who don’t have the luxury of traveling to one of her concerts to see her perform live, an immersive experience in Meta Horizon Worlds might be the next best thing. But Meta isn’t an early mover when it comes to holding concerts in the metaverse. At Rarity Sniper, we’ve covered dozens of musicians showing off their skills in VR across several metaverses over the years.
Here are some of the top headlines:
- Exploring the Future of Music: Decentraland Announces 2023 Music Festival
- The Sandbox Debuts Notorious B.I.G. Web3 Experience
- Walmart Celebrates 50 Years of Hip-Hop in the Metaverse
- Bored Ape Band KINGSHIP Unveils New Experience in Roblox
- K-Pop Sensation Blackpink Unveils Roblox Metaverse Experience
- NFL & Saweetie to Hold Super Bowl Concert in Roblox Metaverse
Meta is one of the biggest companies in the world and its conviction for building and evolving the next generation of virtual worlds only appears to be growing stronger. Time will tell if fans take to VR concert experiences, but considering they give people a new way of experiencing art from some of the most beloved musicians in the world, we expect metaverse concerts are here to stay.