Online Arts & Entertainment in the Times of COVID-19, More Necessary than Ever

As we navigate the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, society and Web 2.0 have taken on a fundamental role in our day-to-day lives. New forms of entertainment have emerged that we can all enjoy from the safety and comfort of our homes and that go beyond traditional family board games. Thanks to the digital age, we are more connected than ever, and despite our confinement and social distancing, our schedules are full of plans, such as virtual meetups with friends and family on videoconferencing apps.

As these new initiatives crop up, the ones dedicated to music, art, culture and online learning stand out most. For musicians and other professional performers, this is probably one of the toughest and most difficult times in their careers. Most have seen their scheduled income opportunities, such as concerts, tours or album launches, either canceled or delayed indefinitely. And no one knows when they will be able to perform on stage again in any kind of live music venue.

As we all adjust to the new reality of life under self-quarantine, a number of artists are taking the show online and livestreaming their performances on YouTube or Instagram. Livestream concerts are the new hot ticket during quarantine, with the first online festival #yomequedoencasafest, held on the the weekend of March 13-15, featuring 30-minute concerts by 50 different artists performing live on their personal Instagram accounts. This first ever online music festival was so well received by the online audience that it was repeated on the following weekend. The weekends of the month of March were set to the sound of this musical initiative, in which 163 artists participated for a total of 83 hours of live music. Immediately, other online festivals began to pop up, such as  MantitaFest, Canción A Domicilio, Caloret Fest, Cuarentena Fest, etc..

This has been a totally new experience for people, one in which rapid adaptation has been key to lifting our spirits and enjoying all the entertainment available to us from home. Many artists have begun doing livestream performances with excellent sound quality, offering a reverse-box-office option, that is to say, the consumer can pay what they consider a fair price for the concert they have just seen.

It’s true that during these difficult times, we’re hearing music all the time, either from balconies or on the screens of our mobile phones. We could say that these concerts and the many different genres of music are helping us get through this quarantine, helping us escape and discover new styles of music and new offerings that we would never have discovered before.

I am so excited by the new possibilities offered by this new paradigm, that I am currently working on a research project for my Final Master’s Project, which will study the impact of these online concerts in a time of pandemic, supervised by Marga Cabrera (Social Media expert at Campus Gandia)

Aline García Muñoz

Student, Master CALSI Social Media