WanderCouch: A Smart TV Approach Towards Experiencing Music Festivals Live from the Living Room

Abstract

Attending music festivals is a popular pastime. However, there will unfortunately always be a share of fans who, for a wide variety of reasons, are unable to visit a festival of their choice in person. This article reports on the expectations users have about being able to immersively experience music festivals from the comfort of their living room. Out of these expectations, we distill an approach for remote festival engagement that is centered around the concept of blending respectively professional and user-generated content. We then crystallize our approach into a Smart TV application called WanderCouch and let prospective users evaluate it in a simulated live setting. The resulting findings suggest that the proposed solution, among other things, exhibits the potential to improve on the experience provided by traditional (TV) coverages of music festivals, to have a positive impact on both immersion and level of engagement with concerts, and to transfer a veracious impression of the festival's general theme and on-site atmosphere.