YouTube is admiration his exclusive Coachella stream starting next week. The headline feature is the platform’s multiview experience (no longer familiar to sports fans) for the two-weekend festival. Our question to this announcement is, who wants to watch a set from several different artists at the same time – when you can only listen to one?
The multiview experience will let you watch up to four stages simultaneously and let you choose which one you want to hear: exactly how multiview works March Madness, NFL games or any other sporting event. How YouTube introduces this feature: “Two of your favorite bands playing on different stages at the same time? No problem, multiview will cover you and your friends to catch both sets simultaneously via the YouTube app on your TV at no extra cost.”
Maybe I’m from the wrong generation and have a very long attention span, but who wants to watch an artist’s set without hearing it? Here’s what happens in the three stages you haven’t heard. Wouldn’t it be better to watch what you hear…? And then get to the others on demand when you can listen to them too?
Sports means multiview because there are scores and breaks to watch, breaks and kicks to keep you focused on another game. You don’t need to hear an NBA game to watch the ball. (Depending on the reviewers, you may prefer not to listen to it.) It’s primarily a visual experience; audio is secondary.
But the music is first and foremost an auditory experience, even when performed live, with all the light shows, fog machines and accompanying dancing. If several of your favorite artists are playing at the same time, you still can’t (and don’t want to) hear more than one at the same time. In YouTube’s multiview, you pick one scene to hear, and watch the rest…along with three other silent acts, in a small box, where they sing and dance silently. Summer?
It sounds like a solution looking for a problem – YouTube applying its existing technology (which, to be fair, works very well with sports) to a music festival. It doesn’t make much sense.
Confused rants aside, YouTube will have six live streams to jump off of (but still four at a time in multiview). This includes Sonora for the first weekend and Yuma for the second. This year’s headliners include Lana Del Rey, Doja Cat, No Doubt and Tyler, the Creator.
Between sets, YouTube will stream “special editorial content” from the artists on the site. Each day after the final set of the night, YouTube’s Coachella channel will replay that day’s sets until the live stream returns the following day. It sounds like a better way to catch sets you might not have seen live.
The event takes place April 12-14 and April 19-21 in Indio, California, about 130 miles east of LA. YouTube’s Coachella channel.
