The blogs had a field day with this Tupac Hologram! Spinner was noticing that dead musicians still make tons of money — Forbes estimated that Michael Jackson earned $170 million in 2010, Elvis $55 million and John Lennon $12 million — and any of them would be a good candidate for this kind of technology. They even had a poll with ‘Would You See a Dead Artist's Hologram Concert?’, and when I looked at it, ‘No Way. They're Gone’ was winning so it was reassuring, but it was by such a small margin (39.1% against 35.7 % for ‘Absolutely, The Technology Is Amazing’, leaving 25.2% of undecided voting ‘Depends on the Band’) that it made me wonder.
As I was reading a MTV article recognizing the sure value of the market for guitar hero resuscitation, as gross and exploitative as it is, I was wondering whether we should now advise famous artists to write a blurb on their will they don’t want to have anything to do with that hologram business after their death? I am not sure Ray Kurzweil (and Conor Oberst) were thinking about this when they talked about the singularity!
But it was Idolator which had the most fun, making up this fake all-hologram Coachella poster! Yes they are all dead, or at least member(s) of each one of these bands is/are dead. There are the more-than obvious ones, Michael Jackson, The Beatles (I can’t believe they are not headlining!), but look closely,… on Friday,… Elliott Smith! I know it’s total heresy and fantasy, but I can’t believe they wrote his name as big as those of James Brown, Johnny Cash and Ray Charles!