Groove Musical Entertainment, or Grooveme for short, gave a sneak peek into the future as it unveiled its revolutionary 3D holograms last week.
We’ve seen this sort of technology before – but usually at glitzy and expensive one-off events.
Rapper Tupac was brought back to life using the magic of hologram in 2012 to perform with Snoop Dogg and Doctor Dre.
And a similar miracle came to pass when Michael Jackson sang at last year’s Billboard Awards.
MJ’s three-minute appearance is estimated to have cost a cool US$4mln.
Grooveme’s mission is to transform the technology from a gimmicky and expensive irrelevance to something more mainstream and commercial.
Utilising the latest image extraction software together with a sound system developed with the help of the University of Salford, Manchester, Grooveme is on the cusp of creating a new and global entertainment phenomenon.
Rob Oldfield, audio research consultant at Salford, has been working on the audio – and his challenge was to make the 3D doppelgangers sound authentic.
He said: “With a hologram it has to look and sound like the words are coming from Bob Geldof’s mouth.”
(Geldof, we should mention, is closely involved with the project.)
Anyway, to overcome the sound problems, Oldfield used 64 speakers to create the illusion that, standing anywhere in a room, the sound seems like it is coming from the hologram.
This, together with the first 3D sound to holographic image recording, made at the famous Abbey Road Studios, in London, help create that air realism.
Sarah Willingham, the newest member of the BBC’s Dragon’s Den team and a Grooveme investor, was impressed by what she saw last week at Black Hangar Studios – the venue for the demonstration.
“I'm really excited about Grooveme. I am convinced that the world is ready for this awesome technology.”
Mark Dinsdale, a graphic designer and managing director of Gardiner Group, added: “With some technology it is hard to see where it will fit but with this you can.
“I am very impressed with the technology and the quality of the hologram.”
Grooveme has secured the rights for the historic footage of LIVE AID from July 1985, and its sequel LIVE8.
And it is building a library of both historic and current musicians, with a number of artists including 80s new wave icon Marc Almond and Geldof already signed up.
Geldof said at a recent recording session: “They keep telling me that the future of karaoke is a hologram band where people can step in and sing the song with them.”
The Japanese ‘sing-along’ market is worth €8bn a year – that’s €2bn more than the film industry there. So given the numbers quoted maybe this is the way to commercially exploit the technology.
Crucially Grooveme believes it has created a commercially viable system, which would enable holographic shows rolled out to thousands of clubs across Asia.
Jake Seal, a director of Grooveme, said: “It’s somewhere between a live performance and theatre. What you will see is better than anyone has done it and anyone will do it.”
So what next for this fledgling business? Well, a stock market listing beckons at some point, according chairman Alex Worrall.
“I think we will be ready to do that in a year to 18 months,” he reveals. In the meantime there is a lot more 3D musical magic to weave.