All about the Minecraft Music Festival – variety

It’s a spring Saturday and five burnsomethings are hiding in a small apartment somewhere deep in Philadelphia, each hunted by a computer. The click-click of their keyboards can only be heard at home but through their device they are running the biggest music festival in the world.

April 25 Block by blockwest, A fun twist on the annual southwestern epidemic that spread across the Southwest Anniversary was held at Minkraft, where block-shaped players can create the virtual world of their wild dreams in a favorite online game.

The team behind this particular world Courier Club, An up-and-coming indie rock band consisting of musician and guitarist Timothy Waldron, top guitarist Ryan Conway, bassist Michael Silverglade and drummer Jack Kessler. Along with Silvergrade’s brother and self-taught Minecraft expert Steven, they saw all music-related cancellations related to the coronavirus as an opportunity to take live music online. But, that dream quickly turned into a nightmare.

On April 25, 30,000 festival participants waited to join the server before the event began – a number that rose to 100,000 at the end of the first hour. Their built-in server can hold thousands of players at once.

Why the hype? Courier Club and their manager, DJ. Was able to book great bands like Suitera, Goog Riot, Nothing, Somewhere, Fever 333, Against the Present, Cherry Glazer, Health, Sir Sly, Idols, Hani and many more. Coronavirus emergency response fund. The day before the fest, they announced that British trip-hop legend Massive Attack would join as a special guest.

Steven helped build their Minecraft server, which had a 400 machines to run as well as a virtual world that was proud of the three steps. Artists submitted pre-recorded sets to be broadcast live through the festival’s website, giving music-comparable sounds to attendees. What started out as an out-of-the-box idea turned into much more. And it comes with some expectations of quality.

The world knows that the music industry has changed forever in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic. Cancels all live music events, including social distance guides, and most likely Resist them until 2021, Travel can no longer be the main source of income for the artist or exposure for the near future. Therefore, musicians are leaning towards other outlets to keep their fans engaged, especially livestream concerts on social media platforms like Instagram.

The lack of entertainment quality in most performances at home, however, opens the door to a music festival set in a game. In February 2019, Marshmallow broke the mold with the first Fortnite concert that attracted nearly 1 million viewers and inspired the likes of Dillon Francis, Steve Aoki and Deadmau 5 and most recently created Travis Scott to promote and monetize the concept. In Scott’s case, his appearance on Fortnight on April 23 reached 12.3 million people and launched a new song directly at the top of the charts, in addition to removing the March created specifically for the Epic Games collaboration.

OpenThe Virtual Event Production Company has been throwing Minecraft Festival for two years. According to Eden Segal-Grossman, who led the development, OpenPit simply started out as a way for a group of mincraft-lovers and music-minded friends around the world to get started. Soon, however, the initial team grew by thousands.

OpenPit puts on its first official festival, Colchella, September 2018 Fire Fire Fest and Mine Gala then in 2019 and OpenPit presents the first Minecraft event of the coronavirus epidemic with the Neder Ment Festival of American Football on April 11, April 24 and OpenPit their Current Critics’ Favorite 100 Gecs – Dylan Brady and Laura Lace Mkano pair – with another partner for the festival has spread.

“Festivals are whatever it is,” says Les Diversity. “Most of the time there’s a high entrance fee like this and it’s hot and sweaty, but it’s about getting people together – so it was free and very easily accessible. That was a big concern.”

Skid Garden, Benefiting Feeding America, had the title of 100 Geeks, including Charlie XXX, Kiro Kiro Bonito, Kashmir Cat, Benny Blanco and Dorian Electra. Inspired by the artwork for the upcoming 100 Gecs remix album “Tree of Life”, Square Garden Minkraft World was a Tripis Fantasy Land filled with mushrooms and lit by a giant, spectacular crescent moon. The stage itself was inside a huge tree, presumably the “Tree of Life” itself, which witnessed the mouth watering of eclectic DJ sets and remix albums. Although the incident did not stop without a hitch – several servers crashed – it succeeded in the mission, drawing a total of 178,000 viewers from Minecraft, Twitch and YouTube and 18,000 unique Minecraft players. Most importantly, Square Garden raises over $ 50,000 Feeding America.

While raising funds for coronavirus relief has been the most obvious consequence of these mincraft festivals, artists and music lovers alike see them as a blueprint for live music in an epidemic-like world, as well as a catalyst for much-needed change in the music industry.

Joe Talbot, the frontman of the British punk band Idols, hopes that such events will lead to more respect for art in society.

“Music and fine arts are one of the most important and natural ways to keep us connected, keeping all of us out of our differences. People really depend on fine arts to get through it,” says Talbot. “It simply came to our notice then [musicians] “We want to help our fans and maintain a relationship, but we want to lose all money.”

The courier clubs have identified costly barriers to entry that most live music events take place, especially at festivals. Minecraft festivals are free for those who have already downloaded the game, and only খেল 26.95 – for new players – this is a standard club show ticket price.

“[Minecraft] It makes the whole concept of the community around music and art more accessible and removes the hierarchy of quality festivals, ”Conway said.

Another luxury of virtual events is the complexity of the return for the customer or the ability to cancel or postpone them without the cost of travel and production for this activity. For this reason, BlockWest has decided to suspend BlockWest on May 16 after the courier club server crashed.

Although they have received some reaction to the decision, the courier club’s public failure has made it possible to hire an international team of developers to help run the festival’s backend. This effort will require a lot more, as they are now building the server at 97 times its original capacity.

Waldron hopes that despite this hiccup, the block by BlockWest – and all the Minecraft festivals – will be seriously considered and watched for the insane feats they have committed.

“There are values ​​that have nothing to do with the epidemic. Oldron says the right time for people to finally see these events as the proper form of entertainment is “hopefully, the lot of gatekeeping and infrastructure that has been put in place before can just burn out. We can just burn it all down and try to cool down a bit. “