Sign up for IQ Index
The latest industry news to your inbox.
Calvin Harris will be playing his first-ever virtual concert, streamed on TikTok LIVE.
The show will take place next Friday (13 January) at 8 pm GMT, and will be broadcast on Harris’ official TikTok account and in Europe and Asia on PICO.
The gig will feature Harris performing as a virtual avatar and “will take fans on a musical journey through Calvin’s virtual universe, featuring audio-reactive visuals in a nature-inspired luminous world”.
“The gig will feature audio-reactive visuals in a nature-inspired luminous world”
“It’s an honour to host Calvin Harris’ first ever virtual concert, which will push the boundaries of what is possible for artists going LIVE on TikTok and PICO,” says Paul Hourican, global head of music operations at TikTok.
“Calvin is a globally acclaimed DJ and performer, responsible for some of the biggest electronic hits and headlining massive international festivals. We’ve loved working with Calvin, Mark and the whole team as well as Wave and PICO to create this experience, which is going to be a special moment for the global TikTok community.”
Harris adds: “I’m so excited to kick off such an innovative music series with Wave, PICO and TikTok and can’t wait for fans to experience my first-ever virtual concert.”
Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.
It’s expensive being a male Calvin Harris fan.
Men who want to go and see Harris at the 4,400-capacity Omnia nightclub at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where the Briton is currently the DJ-in-residence, on 13 May can expect to pay 150% more than female fans, with a general admission presale ticket for women costing just US$40, compared to $100 for men.
Similarly, while a VIP package for the show will set back women $115, men pay $175 (52.17% more) for the same ticket through official agent Ticket Driver:
An explanation on the Omnia/Ticket Drive site says that “to benefit from our flexible check-in and transfer policy, male and female tickets have to be purchased separately for the same per ticket service fee”, but gives no reason for the massive disparity in price.
Such gender-based price discrimination is illegal in a number of US states, including California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but no laws exist in Nevada.
Harris’s partner, Taylor Swift, is a noted feminist who has long campaigned for gender equality in the music industry. (However, statements like “feminism is probably the most important movement that you could embrace, because it’s just basically another word for equality” don’t exactly fit with different gig prices for men and women.)
Martin Daubney, the ex-editor of lads’ mag Loaded, tells The Telegraph the event is trying the “same tawdry tactic” as many less prestigious nightclubs, which routinely charge women less for entry than men: “charge girls less, then rip off the men who live the forlorn dream they will go to a club full of lithe females.”
He adds: “It takes the [piss] out of everybody: the men for ripping them off and the women for treating them as cheap offerings on a meat rack.”
IQ has contacted the Omnia, Ticket Driver and a representative for Harris for comment.
The headline performance by Calvin Harris that closed the first weekend of Coachella on Sunday might have been coolly received by critics – “Scottish ‘DJ’ Calvin Harris ended the three-day festival by pressing play on some pretty choice tunes by other, more worthy closing-night headliners,” wrote a particularly bitchy David Sikorski for The Daily Beast – but from a production point of view it was a roaring success, with a bespoke technical set-up featuring the largest concentration of light ever used in any live show.
To create the light show Harris’s production team deployed every Solaris Flare lighting fixture available in the United States.
Harris also made use of custom software which allowed him to play back any track from his repertoire accompanied by programmed lights, lasers and video (on a huge videowall).
He was joined onstage by Rihanna, Big Sean and John Newman.
Harris, one of the first DJs to headline a festival of Coachella’s scale, is currently playing a residency at the OMNIA Nightclub at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which he recently extended throughout 2016. He last played Coachella in 2014.