2022年经济学人 线上演唱会（2）

（单词翻译）

A recent tour by Little Mix, a British pop group, gives an idea of the new normal.

英国流行乐组合小混混最近的一次巡演让我们对新常态有了一些了解。

The trio played 24 dates in April and May, in arenas² packed with giddy teenagers.

在4月份和5月份，该三人组合在挤满了狂热青少年的剧场内进行了24场演出。

They commissioned Driift to live-stream the final show, which sold nearly 60,000 tickets at 13 pounds to fans in 143 countries.

他们委托Driift直播最后一场演出，以13英镑的价格向143个国家的粉丝出售了近6万张门票。

Another 29,000 paid to watch the feed in cinemas, suggesting total streaming ticket sales of a little over 1.1m pounds.

另有2.9万人付费在电影院观看演出，这意味着流媒体门票的总销售额略高于110万英镑。

Producing the live video cost about 250,000 pounds.

制作现场视频的成本约为25万英镑。

“There's nothing like being in the room,” says Steve Homer, the chief executive of AEG Presents, a live-events giant which promoted Little Mix's in-person gigs.

“任何形式都比不过亲临现场，”AEG Presents的首席执行官史蒂夫·荷马说，AEG Presents是现场活动行业的巨头，负责宣传小混混的现场演出。

But streaming has become “a good bolt-on”.

但流媒体已经成为“一个很好的附加形式”。

Some artists see it as more than that.

一些艺人认为它不止于此。

As social media have squeezed musicians into ever shorter formats³, an hour-long video-concert is “an opportunity to create beautiful long-form content”, says Mr Salmon⁴.

萨尔蒙认为，社交媒体已经将音乐人的表演压缩得越来越短，所以一场长达一小时的视频演唱会是“创造长时间美好内容的机会”。

Digital gigs also provide artists with more data about their fans.

数字演唱会也为艺人提供了更多关于粉丝的数据。

Meanwhile, a new breed of online gaming experience is allowing some artists to transcend⁵ the constraints⁶ of real-life shows.

与此同时，一种新的网络游戏体验让一些艺人打破了现实生活中表演的限制。

In concerts held on Fortnite, an online video game, Travis Scott has mutated into a giant and Ariana Grande has sprouted⁷ wings and let her fans ride flying unicorns⁸.

在网络游戏《堡垒之夜》的演唱会上，特拉维斯·斯科特变成了巨人，爱莉安娜·格兰德长出了翅膀，还让粉丝们骑上了会飞的独角兽。

Roblox, another gaming platform, hosted a Wild West-themed concert in which Lil Nas X appeared as a colossal⁹ cowboy.

另一家游戏平台罗布乐思主办了一场以狂野西部为主题的演唱会，利尔·纳斯·X在演唱会上扮演了一个巨大的牛仔。

Minecraft, a world-building online game, has held music festivals.

世界建造类网络游戏《我的世界》举办了音乐节。

No one thinks such shows are substitutes for in-person performances, but they seem to be outliving the pandemic as an evolving entertainment category in their own right.

没有人认为这样的节目可以替代面对面的表演，但作为一种不断发展的娱乐类别，它们似乎正凭借自己的力量在疫情中生存下来。

These varied¹⁰ formats and technologies hold out the tantalising prospect¹¹ for fans—and concert promoters—of more opportunities to see artists perform.

这些不同的形式和技术为歌迷和演唱会发起人提供了一个诱人前景，即有更多机会观看艺人的表演。

Life on the road is draining, especially for ageing stars or those with children.

在路上奔波的生活让人精疲力竭，对上了年纪或有孩子的明星而言尤其如此。

ABBA's virtual show is in some ways an extension of its early adoption¹² of the music video in the 1970s, which helped the band become world-famous despite doing only a handful of international tours.

在某种程度上，阿巴乐队的虚拟演出是其在20世纪70年代早期采用音乐录影带的延伸，这帮助该乐队在只有几次国际巡演的情况下闻名全球。

“Voyage” can play to hundreds of thousands of fans a year for as long as the band members—or perhaps, one day, their estates—choose.

《航海》每年可以为数十万歌迷演奏，时间长短由乐队成员决定，或者可能有一天，由他们的财产决定。

In theory there is no limit to who could take advantage of this technology.

理论上，谁都可以利用这项技术。

Already Whitney Houston, who died in 2012, performs six nights a week in a Las Vegas hotel, in what the show's organisers describe as “holographic” form.

2012年去世的惠特妮·休斯顿已经在拉斯维加斯的一家酒店每周表演六个晚上，演出组织者称其为“全息”形式。

Buddy¹³ Holly¹⁴, Roy Orbison, Maria Callas and Tupac Shakur have been brought back for similar posthumous¹⁵ concerts.

巴迪·霍利、罗伊·奥比森、玛丽亚·卡拉斯和图派克·夏库尔也被请回来参加了类似的身后音乐会。

The ABBA concert shows how to optimise the effect.

阿巴乐队演唱会展示了如何优化效果。

The proof of the show's persuasiveness¹⁶ came at the end of the premiere when, after a closing rendition of “The Winner Takes It All”, the Abbatars departed and the real ABBA members came on stage to take a bow.

在首次公演接近尾声，《胜者为王》的闭幕表演结束后，Abbatars离开舞台，阿巴乐队真正的成员上台鞠躬，这场演出的说服力在此时得到了证明。

It was the final trick played on the audience: the “real” band members turned out to be another illusion.

这是对观众耍的最后一个把戏：“真正的”乐队成员原来是又一个影像。

They vanished and the real-real ABBA came on stage, to a wild ovation¹⁷.

他们消失了，随后货真价实的阿巴乐队出现在舞台上，迎接热烈的掌声。

“Voyage” had sold more than 300,000 tickets before its opening night; the 3,000-capacity London arena¹ is almost fully¹⁸ booked for summer.

《航海》在首次公演那晚之前已经售出了30多万张门票；可容纳3000人的伦敦剧场的夏季门票几乎被预订一空。

A quarter of the tickets have been bought by fans overseas.

四分之一的门票已被海外歌迷购买。

If the Abbatars are a hit they may perform simultaneously¹⁹ in other cities: the advantage of virtual talent is that “you can just copy-paste them”, says Svana Gisla, a producer of “Voyage”.

如果Abbatars大受欢迎，他们或许可以同时在其他城市演出：虚拟人才的优势就是“你可以直接复制粘贴他们”，《航海》的制作人斯瓦娜·吉斯拉说。

(What's more, she adds, “they don't take days off and they don't get covid.”)

(更重要的是，她补充道，“他们不用休假，也不会感染新冠。”）

Entertainment companies have sent scouts²⁰ to the show.

娱乐公司已经派出侦察人员去看这场演出。

It may give other ageing rock stars something to ponder.

这可能会给其他上了年纪的摇滚明星一些值得思考的东西。

Ludvig Andersson, Benny's son and a producer of the show, is also trying to wrap his mind around the experience of working alongside a recreation of his 33-year-old father.

本尼的儿子、该演出的制作人路德维格·安德森也正试图仔细思考与重现他父亲33岁模样的影像一起工作的经历。

Digitally capturing the band members reminded him of the “19th-century idea of a camera sucking out your soul…That's exactly what we did.”

用数字技术捕捉乐队成员的样子让他想起了“19世纪时，相机会吸走你的灵魂这一想法……这正是我们做的事情。”

He has come to think of the Abbatars as individuals in their own right: a “combination of them being ABBA and them being themselves…A ghost in the machine.”

他开始把Abbatars看作拥有自己权利的独立个体:“他们是阿巴乐队和他们自己的结合体……是机器中的幽灵。”

Whoever or whatever they are, the troupers, immortalised in 120 terabytes, are destined²¹ to go on entertaining new audiences, frozen for ever in 1979.

无论他们是谁，无论他们是什么，这些以120太字节形式不朽的演员，注定要永远保持着1979年的样子，继续娱乐新的观众。