This one caught my attention yesterday. Atlantic Records have teamed up with Roblox in order to put on a virtual event. More snobby types might dismiss this saying it’s not like going to a show. They’re missing the point!

The coronavirus has deprived us of a lot of things over the past year and is likely to continue restricting us to various extents for some time to come. In the meantime, people have had to work out different ways to stay in touch with who and what they love. The clubs might have been closed a year now, but house music is still alive and well, isn’t it?

Gaming is huge these days, and it’s going to continue to be. As restrictions ease, some things will drop off, but games like Roblox are designed to be played frequently over long periods of time. That means people will keep coming back, even when words like “social distancing” and “hand sanitisation station” recede into history.

Is it the same as going to a gig? Certainly not, but it doesn’t need to be. Whether you like it or not, you have to go to where people are to reach them. Harking back to the days of buying vinyl in record shops might be interesting, but that’s largely in the past now.

I tried to explain recently to my 4-year old son that we used to have to go to shops and buy music in the past. He struggled to compute the idea. This might take the likes of me some getting used to, but this is the way things are.

Maybe I should try something like this myself. A potentially global reach for a very small amount of money compared to what a tour would cost…