Earlier today, UK-based virtual concert startup MelodyVR announced it was buying Napster, which you probably remember as the music piracy service that almost got you kicked out of college for using too much bandwidth. In recent years, Napster struck licensing deals with labels and was bought and sold, but never achieved the market penetration of services like Spotify or Apple Music; it was most recently owned by Rhapsody and repacked as a B2B music play.

With this acquisition, MelodyVR is taking a direct shot at the Wave, whose most recent partnership with The Weeknd and TikTok drew huge buzz. Until now, MelodyVR focused on virtual reality concerts, with footage from events pre-Covid and performances taped in Covid-safe studios since the spring. …

AlwayS go OUT in an Ice St0Rm.❄️

In January of 2005, I ignored dire weather reports and went to see a friend’s band play 🎶, only to run into an old colleague who wound up making me a LIFE changing job offer that night.

10 years later, I braved the cold to go see EMA, an indie musician, play a show at MoMA PS1 in Queens 👸 as part of the performance, members of the audience put on an Oculus DK1 and did a short VR experience. …

In addition to my day job, I have taught for several semesters as an adjunct professor at NYU. The state of New York recently passed a law mandating sexual harassment training, and I got an email from the university with a link to complete the required course. I followed directions, and an hour later, I wanted to cry.

The course was awful. It started with two visually dull, droning videos that mentioned a lot of regulations but were easy enough to tune out as I backgrounded the screen and answered emails and read Twitter. I then saw a series of scenarios, just words on a screen read aloud, with a quiz after each that a nine-year-old could have easily passed. The scenarios were laughably over the top and without an ounce of nuance and ambiguity. …

First, a little story. Three years ago, when I was working at a VR production company, two men came by to demo a platform they were building. I hopped in the Vive and one of them immediately started barking instructions at me: “click the trigger! Now teleport over there! No, over there! Now use the button to scroll up! No, the other button!” Finally, I took the headset off out of sheer frustration and exhaustion, only to have one of them ask me if I even knew how to use VR at all.

This page is meant to be a living document that will be updated as needed to answer common questions about using virtual and augmented reality for training. As it stands now, there is a disconnect between the core VR/AR industry and the mass audience that needs to buy in for it to be widely adopted. My hope is that this will serve as a resource both for those looking to have their questions about VR/AR for training answered and those who work in VR/AR and need easy talking points.

You can find out more about my agency, Friends With Holograms, on our website. And if you’re interested in working with us after reading this, please reach out! …

As other pieces on this site outline, the near future of retail is certainly going to be exciting. But even in the present, there are simple technical innovations that can change not only the retail experience but the lives of some of our most marginalized and vulnerable populations — not as sexy as robots gliding around to bring you a perfectly coordinated ensemble, but powerful nonetheless.

Solving the Labor Market Mismatch

With a surging labor market and record low unemployment, retail chains are finding themselves strapped for talent to stock shelves, ring up customers, and answer basic questions. While Amazon Go might represent the future of how we buy groceries, these stores today remain largely novelties, and current self-checkout options seem to have been designed by people with no background in user design whatsoever. …

I recently spent a fascinating day at an event put on by Samsung Next and the NYC Media Lab, featuring wide ranging discussions on artificial intelligence (AI) and characters — specifically, how we will interact with AI characters as technology progresses. In the afternoon, I led a breakout session on AI and emotional labor, including a discussion of how our relationships with AI characters and robots will impact our relationships with other humans.

Already, we are starting to see a change in how we interact with service workers, driven by Alexa and Siri. Young children are adept at using digital assistants to get information and fulfill requests — however, they have a hard time distinguishing between the devices that provide them with things and the humans who do the same work. More than one parent I know has told me their kids yell at Alexa and then turn around and yell at service workers, because they see the two as being equal (for the record, all those parents were horrified and immediately rebuked the behavior). But the trend towards these type of interactions will only continue, and become more human. One startup at the event has a product that allows customers to use AR to ask a virtual human questions in a store. On one level, this is useful and great, a boon for customers and a way for service workers to focus on other tasks. But on the other hand, if a user starts to expect this behavior and is then forced to deal with a human who doesn’t have immediate answers or provide flawless service, the annoyance will be much greater. …

From trade shows to arts festivals, more brands and organizers are looking to incorporate virtual reality than ever before. But successfully pulling off a large public showing of a VR experience takes a lot more than simply building a piece and renting a few headsets and computers. If done right, VR demos at events can drive conversation and conversion and provide a great way to set your booth apart. Done wrong, it can create major headaches and a negative impression.

The first and most important question you should consider as you start thinking about whether you want to include VR is the intention of the demo. Why are you creating a VR piece as opposed to another type of promotional content, and what story are you trying to tell? Making VR isn’t cheap or easy, and if you don’t have a clear goal in mind, then it can quickly spiral out of control and leave you with a bloated mess of an experience. Are you trying to show off a product, or tell your brand’s origin story? Is the purpose educational or just for entertainment? There are no right or wrong answers, but all those questions need to be raised and answered before moving forward and building anything. …