From the very beginning, The Verge has been about the endless and fascinating collision of technology and culture — how the tools we use to consume and create art affects the art itself, and how the art shapes our tools. We can see it all around us, from a generation that communicates in gifs and emojis to the slow build of VR headsets explicitly influenced by 90s cyberpunk literature. Technology influences art; art inspires technology. This is why we’re here.
The relationship between music and technology is becoming the most complex and powerful dynamic in the entire industry. Technology has made it easier to create and distribute and engage with music than ever before, while sending the entire business model of the industry into chaos time and time again. None of that would be possible if music didn’t have such a charged, deeply emotional place in culture — not just here but around the world. More often than not, the future starts in music — whether it’s being disseminated through the latest streaming technology, or giving voice to our most urgent social concerns.
With that in mind, we’re very pleased to announce that The Verge is partnering in the Panorama music festival in New York City this summer. Headlined by artists like LCD Soundsystem, Kendrick Lamar, and Arcade Fire, Panorama promises to be three days of unforgettable music, art, and technology, and we’ll be reporting from the center of it all.
The way we listen to and discover music changes with every passing month, while the experience of seeing live music has become more important than ever — not only for artists, but for fans and the cities that host them. The festival landscape is crowded, but Panorama promises to be a different, more forward-looking approach to the whole three-days-in-a-field-with-a-million-amazing-bands experience. As the media partner for the festival, The Verge will document how that experience comes together, by talking to the artists who are shaping the future of music — about their relationship with technology, their fans and the media. We’re going to sit down with them in their studios and on the road to see their tools, and see first-hand how quickly the future of music is actually unfolding at festivals around the country. We’ll tell stories with every tool we have at our disposal, from photography and video to new platforms like VR. We’re going to have a ton of fun.
And we’ll cap it all off by celebrating for three days at Panorama itself, inside an interactive experience we’re calling Future Lab. We’ll have much more on that in the weeks to come. But for now, start getting ready for one of the summer’s biggest events by checking out the full Panorama lineup, and stay tuned for much, much more from The Verge.
