Alan puts it best in this episode of XR for Business: Sam Schoonover’s job with Goldenvoice is to create “wow” moments at music festivals like Coachella. Sam talks about the groundwork they’ve laid at Coachella for immersive reality so far, and where he plans to take it going forward.

Alan: Coming up next on the XR

for Business Podcast, we have Sam Schoon over from Goldenvoice and

Coachella, my favorite music festival in the world. We're going to be

talking about augmented reality spaceships, augmented reality

portals, bringing video to life in a AR and El Pollo Loco. All that

and more coming up next on the XR for Business Podcast.

Sam, welcome to the show.

Sam: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Alan: It's my absolute pleasure,

man. As you know -- and as people on the show who know because I've

mentioned it before -- Coachella is one of my absolute favorite music

festivals. And having been a deejay for 20 years myself, I've been to

a few. Coachella is just this magical place. So I'm really excited to

unlock two of my favorite things -- music festivals and XR -- with

you on the show. So, thank you so much.

Sam: Yeah, absolutely. Me as

well. I think a lot of people out there would agree with you.

Alan: Yeah, man. So tell me, how

did you end up working with Coachella and what have you done before

and how did you get there? Let's just get into it.

Sam: Previous to this job, I was

doing a whole assortment of different things in the music industry,

and I guess the technology industry as well. I was a freelance

website developer, and had also been curating music and had developed

a playlist curation application. And then alongside that, I was

promoting with various promoters in San Diego and Los Angeles and

touring shows. And that eventually -- that and a music blog and I was

doing at the time -- introduced me to the guy who started Splash

House, which is a smaller music festival in Palm Springs. And through

him, I met the Goldenvoice team and I got involved at Goldenvoice

Digital, and in a roundabout way, ended up focusing entirely on

innovation just for Coachella.

Alan: What a dream job for

somebody like... "here, your job is to focus on innovation, make

really cool things that nobody's done in the world, for the most

impressive festivals in the world."

Sam: Yeah, sure. I mean, it's a

lot of fun. It's fun to be able to focus on new things every day. And

we have like just such an incredible team at Goldenvoice, the people

who have been doing Coachella for the past 20 years are still

involved and still loving it. And they're really the reason why this

job even exists, because they appreciate innovation and they

understand its place and our future. And and they understand that

innovating and experimenting and sometimes failing, but always trying

is a part of what makes things great and stand the test of time.

Coachella is in a unique situation, where it's a successful music

festival and it's a successful business, so we have the ability to

spend money on experiences like that, while not every festival out

there is so lucky.

Alan: Yeah. And you guys --

well, "you guys," I think it was before you even got there

-- but Coachella is no stranger to virtual and augmented reality. I

remember in, oh man, it must be 2015/16, Coachella livestreamed 360

content to VR headsets and I believe it was pushing to the -- it was!

-- it was the Samsung GearyVR at the time. I remember watching one of

one of the shows from there and thinking, "oh man, I'm literally

like getting crazy FOMO."

Sam: Yeah, you're right. It was

kind of our first foray actually into, like, I guess what we would

call the VR industry. I think as a lot of us have learned, those 360

music streaming