Looking inside the VR Music Scene: Mapping Platforms, Events and People

Paper Title

Looking inside the VR Music Scene: Mapping Platforms, Events and People

Publication Info

• Topic area: Social Virtual Reality (Social VR) music communities and their practices.
• Keywords: Social VR, music performance, virtual platforms, community-driven ecosystems, cultural mapping, grassroots practices, virtual concerts, VRChat, immersive environments, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: HCI research has primarily focused on building new VR systems rather than studying existing cultural practices in Social VR music communities. There is limited understanding of how these communities operate, sustain themselves, and redefine notions of performance and community.
• Significance: Social VR music communities represent a thriving cultural ecosystem that challenges narratives of the "metaverse’s" decline. Understanding these practices is crucial for supporting grassroots innovation and informing future HCI design.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research has explored technical challenges like latency and instrument design but overlooked sustained community practices. Studies of appropriation and creative ecosystems (e.g., Twitch, fan communities) provide a foundation, but VR music communities remain underexplored.

Solution

• Proposed approach: A cultural mapping of the Social VR music scene, examining platforms, events, and roles through surveys, interviews, and ethnographic observations.
• Novelty:
  1. Mapping the VR music performance landscape across platforms and roles.
  2. Extending HCI’s understanding of platform-based cultural ecosystems, highlighting the cross-platform nature and multimodal affordances of Social VR music.
  3. Proposing ways for HCI to better support grassroots ecosystems and community-driven innovation.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted a 35-question online survey with 84 participants to capture platform preferences, roles, and motivations.
  • Semi-structured interviews with 27 stakeholders (musicians, developers, organisers, audiences) to explore practices and values.
  • Observations of 12 live and 5 recorded VR music events across platforms to contextualize reported practices.
  • Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) to identify patterns and themes across datasets.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Social VR music operates as a fragmented, cross-platform ecosystem sustained by community labour and user-generated infrastructure.
  • Roles are fluid, with individuals often shifting between performer, organiser, audience, and creator roles.
  • Motivations include social connection, identity exploration, accessibility, creativity, and interactivity.
  • Monetisation challenges persist due to high production costs, audience expectations of free access, and platform dependencies.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Provides a detailed ecosystemic perspective, contrasting with prior studies focused narrowly on technical systems or single-platform use cases.
  • Highlights the cultural and social dynamics that sustain VR music communities beyond technical affordances.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Survey captured demographic and experiential data from 84 participants.
  • Interviews provided in-depth narratives from 27 stakeholders across diverse roles.
  • Observations documented real-time practices and interactions during 17 VR music events.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Focused primarily on Western and English-language platforms; future research should explore diverse cultural contexts.
  • Captured practices at a specific technological moment; longitudinal studies could examine adaptation over time.
  • Methodology required significant time investment; more efficient approaches to studying distributed virtual communities are needed.

Summary

This study mapped the Social VR music ecosystem, revealing a vibrant culture sustained by grassroots coordination and creative experimentation across platforms like VRChat and bespoke tools like PatchWorld. Through surveys, interviews, and observations, the research highlighted fluid roles, motivations, and the challenges of monetisation and platform dependency. Findings suggest that HCI can learn from these community-driven ecosystems by focusing on cultural sustainability, supporting invisible labour, and designing for resilience. The study challenges corporate narratives of the metaverse’s decline and emphasizes the importance of community-defined models of success in virtual environments.