5G Festival culminates in a live, hybrid showcase event
Posted 9 Mar 2022
5G Festival culminates in a live, hybrid showcase event
A world-first performance underpinned by 5G technology has taken place involving artists located at three of the UK’s most iconic music venues: Metropolis Studios, the O2 Blueroom at The O2 and Brighton Dome. The ground-breaking festival experience was held to celebrate the climax of the award-winning 5G Festival project.
Over the last two years, nine heavyweight organisations have worked collectively with Digital Catapult to explore the untapped potential of 5G for the live music industry and provide a blueprint for how technology could play a key role in the future of the sector, including Audiotonix, Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival, LiveFrom, Mativision, Metropolis Studios, Sonosphere, Virgin Media O2, and Warner Music Group, as part of the wider £200m DCMS 5G Testbeds & Trials Programme.
Taking place simultaneously across the three venues, more than 20 musicians performed together in a unique concert, showcasing the technical achievements made during the project, and demonstrating the potential role advanced digital technologies could play in the festival of the future.
Headliners included double-platinum album selling singer-songwriter Newton Faulkner and Brighton-based Alt Folk band Memorial, both playing in Brighton Dome’s iconic Concert Hall to an in-person audience. Rising stars, BRIT Award nominee and voice of the 2021 John Lewis Christmas Ad, Lola Young, and Natalie Lindi, part of the MOBO Unsung Class of 2021, performed live in the O2 Blueroom at The O2. They were joined by seamless backing vocals, drums and keyboard from Brighton Dome, and guitar and percussion live from Metropolis Studios in West London. London-based rock duo Pearl Harts did a stand-alone performance at Metropolis Studios, which was live streamed to the other venues as part of the hybrid festival experience.
5G Festival is a unique R&D trial that enables the power of 5G and other technologies to communicate the “live-ness” of an experience wherever audiences or musicians are. Since early 2020, the partners behind 5G Festival have experimented with understanding how collaborations and performances across multiple venues in different geographical locations can transform the work of artists and producers around the world, combined with innovative and memorable live experience for audiences in-venue and at home.
The 5G Festival showcase featured demonstrations of the technical milestones that have been achieved during the course of the project – in particular solving the issue of latency (delay) between artists collaborating remotely with each other from different locations – as currently, it is not possible for artists to perform together, remotely, over an ordinary network.
Most importantly, the showcase provided the clearest demonstration yet of the potential future use cases for 5G in the music and live arts sector, as well as the commercial benefits of using 5G as part of a range of connectivity solutions for this type of event, and how other advanced technologies like virtual and augmented reality, can be seamlessly combined to produce novel experiences for performers and audiences alike.
5G Festival has shown us the tangible impact of technology on our experience of live music, both how we could make it and consume it remotely. This project has been about elevating and enhancing live music for all involved. None of us wants to replace the authenticity of the real life experience, but if we’ve learned one thing in the last two years, it’s that remote can be meaningful too! 5G really has enabled real time remote jamming between musicians for the first time. When combined with augmented reality, this has opened up super exciting potential for reducing our carbon footprint and making global music collaborations work.
Jeremy Silver CEO, Digital Catapult
Our purpose at Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival is to offer extraordinary experiences where people can come together to enjoy, imagine, create and exchange. The innovative technology behind the 5G Festival Showcase allows us to explore new opportunities for our artists and audiences to connect, keeping us at the forefront of artistic and technological advances and enabling us to attract even greater talent from around the world to our shores – both virtually and in person.
Andrew Comben Chief Executive, Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival
After a rewarding 18 months of pioneering R&D and practical trials, we are delighted to finally share our findings with our wider tech and music communities. In particular for Metropolis Studios, the delivery of seamless low latency audio/visual workflow enabling artists to work together remotely over a 5G network, as well as the ability to broadcast live performances in any immersive audio format, are two huge cultural and commercial step-changes for the industry which we intend to develop further as a legacy of this project.
Gavin Newman Brand Director, Metropolis Studios
Mativision have been privileged to work with such a talented consortium of partners to develop a robust, immersive audiovisual streaming platform that presents 5G next-generation remote production workflows. We’ve been able to extend the project scope to deliver a showcase event which incorporates a multitude of live performers and producers, giving an insight into how this powerful platform can be used to create unique artist collaborations and audience experiences.
Anthony Karydis Founder & CEO, Mativision
This is one of the most exciting projects I have ever been fortunate enough to have taken part in. Back in June 2021, we did the first trials where we had six musicians playing across three venues. Standing in the middle of the Concert Hall at Brighton Dome and hearing these musicians, who were 60 miles apart, play together like they were in the same room was a very moving experience and one I will never forget. I believe, as a team, we have achieved something truly ground-breaking and potentially world changing. I am so proud that Sonosphere has played a small part in this amazing project. This might be the final showcase, but it’s only the end of the first chapter of this amazing journey. There is much more to come.
Jamie Gosney Director & Owner, Sonosphere
Our teams are delighted that 18 months of hard work has been so clearly demonstrated at the 5G Festival showcase. With a combination of our audio over IP, networking, live mixing and immersive in-ear technologies we have been able to provide a reliable, low latency, high capacity audio platform that we hope can transform the live music experience for artists and audiences alike. This platform can also provide artists with future creative opportunities in a virtual environment. We look forward to seeing where this may go in the future.
Neil Hooper Group Technology Officer, Audiotonix
This is the climax of a lot of hard work amongst the consortium partners. Our objective was to demonstrate the potential future use cases for 5G and other technologies in the music and live entertainment sector and this moment marks a significant milestone on that journey. These trials are a pathway towards creating better, more exciting and more connected events, at iconic venues such as The O2.
Kirsty Bright Director of Network Innovation, Strategy & Transformation, Virgin Media O2
After two years of intense collaboration, we are at the final stretch of a world-first R&D project that will open up new possibilities for creators around the world. The untapped potential of 5G will allow musicians to connect in ways they didn’t feel possible, whilst promoters are excited about the prospect of this technological advancement. As the 5G Festival brings the pilot to a close, it will be exciting – particularly as we emerge from living in lockdown – to see audiences revel in one big celebration that breaks down geographical barriers and brings everyone closer together.
Tiago Correia Senior Director, New Business & Ventures, WMG
We are seeing a total reinvention of the live gig experience through the power of 5G and I’m proud the government has helped raise the curtain on these distance-defying performances. The 5G Festival is part of our £200 million scheme to explore new ways this mobile technology can drive growth in our creative industries and wider economy.
Digital Minister Julia Lopez DCMS
Funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme, 5G Festival is part of efforts across the music sector to create innovative platforms for musicians and artists to write, rehearse and perform music despite geographical barriers, and deliver new ways for audiences to watch and participate with live performances in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Find out more at www.5gfestival.co.uk
Images credit: Jamie MacMillan