Latest / The 5G Podcast with Fexingo: Wireless Networks, Carriers, and Mobile Infrastructure / How 5G Is Quietly Reshaping the Music Industry
Transcript
- Lucas: When you think of 5G and music, you probably think faster downloads, fewer buffering hiccups on Spotify. But there's a quieter story happening in live performance, in the studio, and even inside the instruments themselves. Luna: You're talking about how 5G is actually changing how music is made and experienced, not just how it's delivered. Lucas: Exactly. And the most vivid example I've seen recently is the band Glass Animals. On their 2025 tour, they partnered with Verizon and a company called HoloPresence to create a mixed-reality stage show. Luna: Mixed reality meaning the audience sees holographic elements layered onto the real performance, right? Not just on a screen but actually appearing on stage? Lucas: That's it. They used 5G private networks at each venue to feed real-time tracking data and render holograms of the band members that could move and interact with the live performers. The latency was under ten milliseconds. Luna: Under ten milliseconds — that's the difference between a hologram feeling present versus feeling like a glitchy video call. Lucas: Right. And it's not just about flashy visuals. A lot of artists are using 5G for what's called 'remote collaboration in the moment.' For instance, during Coachella this year, the producer Mura Masa was in Tokyo but performed live with a band in Indio. They were sending stems back and forth in real time, remixing on the fly with zero perceptible delay. Luna: That's wild. So the audience in California hears the remix as it's being created in Tokyo, with no lag. That fundamentally changes what a live show can be. Lucas: It does. And it's not just big festivals. Some smaller venues are starting to install private 5G networks. The Hollywood Bowl, for example, did a pilot last year with a dedicated 5G network for audio mixing. The sound engineers told me it eliminated the radio-frequency interference they used to get from walkie-talkies and cellphones. Luna: So cleaner audio, more reliable, and they can push more channels of high-resolution sound without compression. Lucas: Exactly. You know, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these shows going — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, it really adds up. Even skipping one coffee shop latte a month helps us keep this ad-free and focused on the tech that matters. Lucas: And we appreciate it. So beyond live sound, there's also the spatial audio piece. Apple Music and Dolby have been pushing spatial audio, but to really mix it well, engineers need to simulate how sound moves around a listener in three dimensions. Luna: Which requires a ton of processing power. And with 5G, you can offload that rendering to the cloud. Lucas: Yes. A company called AudioMob has been working on a platform where a mixing engineer in London can work with a session in Los Angeles, using 5G to stream uncompressed multi-track audio and have the spatial mix rendered in real time on the cloud. That lowers the cost of producing immersive audio. Luna: So it's not just about the concert experience. It's about democratizing high-end production for smaller artists. Lucas: That's the angle that excites me most. You have an indie artist in a home studio who can now access the same spatial audio tools as a major label act, because the heavy compute is happening on a 5G-connected edge server. Luna: And that edge server is close enough that the latency is imperceptible. Otherwise the artist would hear a delay and it would throw off their timing. Lucas: Exactly. There's also the instrument side. A company called ROLI makes these expressive keyboards called Seaboard. They've started incorporating 5G SIM cards into their newest model, the Seaboard Rise 2. It connects directly to a cloud-based synth engine. Luna: So the instrument itself becomes thinner and lighter because all the sound generation is in the cloud. And you can update the sounds over the air. Lucas: Yes. ROLI's founder said that in testing, musicians couldn't tell the difference between local processing and cloud processing over 5G. That's a huge shift for hardware design. Luna: What about the recording studio? Is 5G changing that too? Lucas: Yeah, and in a pretty concrete way. Abbey Road Studios in London partnered with BT to install a 5G private network. They now have a studio-in-a-box — a portable rig with 5G that can transmit 64 channels of uncompressed audio from any location back to the main studio. Luna: So if an artist wants to record in a cathedral or a forest, they can get that natural reverb, and the engineer in London hears it in real time as if they were there. Lucas: Right. And the fidelity is high enough for a commercial release. That's a big deal because previously, remote recording meant compressed audio or satellite links with noticeable delay. Luna: And 5G's upload speeds are finally catching up. I think some carriers are now offering symmetrical speeds in certain areas. Lucas: Verizon has been pushing their 5G Ultra Wideband specifically for creative professionals. They even launched a program called '5G for Artists' that gives selected musicians free access to private network slices for live streaming and collaboration. Luna: So the infrastructure is becoming part of the creative toolkit, not just a utility. Lucas: That's the frame I'd use. And it extends to the audience, too. At some recent shows, fans could use their own 5G phones to experience an augmented reality overlay synced to the band's performance. Luna: I've seen that. At a Coldplay concert last year, they had an app that would show animated visuals on your phone screen that matched the song's rhythm, and it was all synced via 5G. Lucas: That's the kind of thing that feels gimmicky until you realize it's opening a new revenue stream for artists — selling digital merchandise or exclusive AR experiences that are only available live. Luna: And it works because the latency is low enough to keep the sync tight. Otherwise fans would put down their phones in frustration. Lucas: Exactly. So to circle back, the music industry is quietly becoming a sort of proof of concept for what 5G can do beyond just speed tests. It's about creative expression enabled by reliable, low-latency connectivity. Luna: And the best part is that many of these tools are gradually becoming accessible to independent artists, not just stadium headliners. Lucas: That's the hope. The technology is still early, but the trajectory is clear. I'm curious to see what happens when 5G standalone networks become more widespread — that's when we'll see truly innovative use cases emerge. Luna: And maybe even music genres that are built around the capabilities of a network, like '5G pop' or something. Lucas: I'm not sure about the genre name, but the concept isn't far-fetched. If an instrument can be anywhere, and the audience can be anywhere, the definition of a live performance starts to blur. Luna: And that's a conversation worth continuing.