How one startup is betting big on music to change VR

Besttechie · December 27, 2016

Think about the most emotional medium you’ve experienced. For some of you, it could be movies, for some it could be books, but for so many all around the world, a strong emotional connection can only be created by music. If we combine that emotional connection with one of the most immersive entertainment experiences ever–virtual reality, what will happen? If you ask new VR entertainment startup Inception, what you get is something magical and explosive.

Inception, a VR production house focusing on non-gaming VR entertainment have put their best foot forward with three musical partnerships. They decided to team up with musicians from across genres such as Ed Harcourt and The Mystery Jets. They also teamed up with the popular dance party line The Boiler Room. This shows the big bet that Inception is putting on music.

Inception VR experiences.

The Mystery Jets and Ed Harcourt are teaming up with Inception to take the emotional level of their music one step further, by creating a 360 experience. Ed and the Jets are betting on the immersion to bring their fans to an even higher emotional level. The Boiler Room is taking the concept in a whole different direction. Instead of creating one musical experience, The Boiler Room’s VR experience is dedicated to creating a virtual party, transporting any user to a boiler room of their very own. Just like The Boiler Room parties, the VR experience is released on an ongoing basis, with new and exciting rooms and mixes, some of which aren’t even possible in the regular reality’s Boiler Room.

One possible problem that comes to mind with this approach, though, is that instead of creating a brand new type of experience for VR, Inception took an existing format, music videos, and VRified it. Is it enough to create truly innovative content? In my opinion, only if the VR experiences are far enough removed from what we’ve already seen in music videos can Inception truly rely on music to be their ticket into the future of content.

One additional question comes to mind: are people dedicated enough to the medium of music videos to take the leap and check it out on the VR rig nearest to them? Inception is betting big on music with their first round of content, but is the musical horse the right one to bet on? A big part of me says it is, but let’s not forget that the current success of music videos is their wide reach and accessibility due to the revolution created by YouTube. VR isn’t exactly a household technology, and even cardboard goggles aren’t really that common, so only time will tell if VR music videos will actually be able to create the same splash that regular videos do.

Is music the future of VR? Only time will tell, until then, we are left wondering what Taylor Swift’s VR experience will look like, and how many cats it will feature.

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