An EDM DJ Held a Live Concert on Fortnite and 10 Million Attended. No, seriously. posted: 19/03/2019
by Patrick Perez for tdg
On Sunday evening, the Recording Academy handed out awards for excellence in the music industry at the 61st Grammy Awards. The conventional categories were recognized and awarded. Just eight days earlier, two unconventional forces joined to pull off the first-ever live virtual concert in the popular Fortnite game. And what happened there will disrupt the business of live music and more.
Coming to a City Near You
EDM DJ Marshmello, famous for wearing a white bucket on his head in the shape of a marshmallow, has toured the world - from the biggest venues in Las Vegas to the nightclubs of Ibiza. Yet his recent venue was unlike any other: performing live in the most popular video game on the planet, Fortnite.
Fortnite, the leading battle royale game and a focus of TDG's recent report, The Ascent of Battle Royale and the Future of eSports, has more than 200 million players worldwide, according to developer Epic Games.
Marshmello's ten-minute set was among the most-attended online live performances in history at a reported 10 million concurrent views. During the event, attendees converged on the virtual town's Pleasant Park to hear and see the EDM DJ perform, including a mashup of his hits including chart-topper Happier, as the DJ worked the turntables to amp the crowd.
To add context, Beyonce's live stream from Coachella in 2018 was heralded as the most-watched live music event on YouTube, at 458,000 simultaneous peak concurrent viewers over the course of her 105-minute set. Marshmello got 22 times as many viewers in just 10 minutes. Chew on that for a bit.
Attendees dressed up their avatars, performed wacky dance moves (including the Marsh Walk ), threw down their best emotes, and tossed around oversized happy beach balls, as they would at The String Cheese Incident concert in IRL. In this case, however, the setting is fully virtualized - a one-of-a-kind intersection of VR, music, gaming, and community.
Setting the Stage for Success
Days ahead of the performance, anticipation built as Fortnite players watched the construction of the virtual stage on which Marshmello would perform. DJM went so far as to list the venue, Pleasant Park, on his official tour itinerary, adding to the reality of the event. When learning of the concert, many players made a point to block out their schedules to tune in. Afterwards, some said this was the first concert they had ever attended.
What makes me happiest about today is that so many people got to experience their first concert ever, said Marshmello on Twitter. All the videos I keep seeing of people laughing and smiling throughout the set are amazing.
Videogame developer and father, Robert Bowling burst into his son's bedroom at 11 PM at night and yelled Get out of bed! We're going to a Marshmello concert in Pleasant Park! We then danced and laughed and sang for 15 minutes. It was incredible. Fornite isn't a game. It's something else.
According to Mike Fischer, a senior analyst at TDG and former head of publishing at Epic Games, These interactive virtualized environments will evolve from binary experiences, player-vs-player or one-to-many, into more unique ways for people to interact with each other and with live VR performances of all kinds.
A perfect example of this evolution is TheWaveVR, a company in which Fischer is an investor and adviser. It has created an entire platform just for live VR music shows that allows people who love music to view, host, and socialize within the shows, anywhere in the world. TheWaveVR goes beyond traditional headsets, collaborating with artists to create custom VR worlds where users can interact with each other and parts of the world to create remixes.
Migrating Ecosystems: From Gaming to Robust Community
There is no doubt that Fortnite is the most popular game on the planet, but as TDG noted in its 2018 report, it is quickly becoming a massive social platform; providing players with a sense of community far beyond ordinary game environments.
Alternate communities are also manifest in a recent in-game rocket launch, with players building their own structures to better view the blastoff. And Fortnite's recent addition of The Block - a virtual slab of concrete - allows fans to create and showcase their own private island and invite others to play on their finished maps.
For Epic, it's very clear that permitting user-generated content (UGC) into Fortnite makes this more than just a game. The audience is so unique and so large that they're having a lot of fun expressing themselves within the game, says Fischer.
The Virtues of Going Social
These types of creative deployments could help save traditional VR from early extinction. In fact, that was a theme during panel discussions at the recent Digital Entertainment World conference in Marina del Rey, where panelists reminded the audience that VR is far from dead. Events like the Marshmello concert show give a healthy dose of CPR to a VR industry that some say is ready to flatline.
And the artists benefit, as well. The Fortnite activation created not only the biggest audience of Marshmello's career, but of a scale far beyond modern frames of reference. Post-concert, Marshmello's on-demand streams increased more than 20,000%, and his song, Check This Out, saw an increase of almost 24,000% on February 2, compared to the previous day.
And along with astronomical viewing numbers come tremendous value-added revenue opportunities from merchandising, licensing, and promotions. Case in point: the live concert occurred prior to the release of Marshmello's newest collaboration with artist Svdden Death, which was conveniently released a few days later.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
An EDM DJ Held a Live Concert on Fortnite and 10 Million Attended. No, seriously. posted: 19/03/2019 
