It’s like an AR lightshow in your living room.
San Francisco based startup, Wavy, is looking to help musicians enhance their music videos with AR. The hope is to change the fan listening experience by transforming music into a much deeper visual experience, bringing environments to life using 3D animation and storytelling.
And what better way to experience these AR listening experiences than on the device that’s already in your pocket. Available now on the Apple app store as a free download, Wavy morphs the world around you into an AR concert lightshow that transforms the way you’ll listen to music on your phone.
AR enhanced music isn’t a brand new concept, over the past two years we’ve seen musicians using AR or VR as a marketing tool for their music. Bjork, Michael Jackson, 2 Chainz and various other musicians have all turned to immersive experiences as a way for them to offer fans something more than just music. It’s become this tool for artists to actually reach out and interact with you.
The music industry is rapidly changing, sites like Bandcamp and Soundcloud are making it incredibly easy to release music, but that also means its easy for musicians to get lost in the shuffle. “Here today – gone today’ isn’t far from the truth,” said Kirsten Ferguson, a PR rep for a music campaign agency. “Using Wavy and augmented reality to offer fans something different would be incredibly helpful for musicians to stay on the radar of music fans as well as make them stand out from the crowd.”
“Music is inherently something that already augments your perception of the world, because it can change your mood, it’s that powerful,” said Hammad Bashir, one of the creators of Wavy. “What we are doing with our app is bringing that perception into a visual space, which can also be very powerful.”
To bring each AR track to life, the Wavy team uses a combination of various 3D modeling tools, Unity and Apple’s ARKit, to build individual experiences that bring ambiance and connectivity between you and the artist in a way that is unique to each song. But the experience doesn’t end there, it also looks to deliver an AR interpretation of what you might experience if you’re at a venue watching a live show, complete with all of the emotions and excitement of a live event.
“We want people to be able to experience music from artists on a much deeper level,” said Bashir.
From the artist perspective, “AR is the future of connecting fans with music, it’s interactive and fun,” said Carson Willms; one half of the EDM band, Joyzu, and whose song, 2 (featuring Blest Jones) appears on the Wavy app. “After seeing the first round of ideas, we were stoked – we fell in love with the idea.”
For now, Wavy comes with two AR experiences, but you can expect new tracks to appear on the app over the next few months from other artists. All tracks will be free and exclusive to the Wavy app.
