The World’s First Interactive 5G Music Concert: Professional Quality Networked Music Over a Commodity Network Infrastructure

The principle of distributed music with musicians performing in different locations and connected via the Internet has been investigated over several decades, with numerous performances demonstrated as a proof of concept. The scope of these performances, however, was either experimental or amateur; furthermore, most of them used a dedicated network infrastructure with correspondingly high costs. In contrast, this paper describes the first commodity hardware-based 5G distributed music event at professional quality with jazz music celebrity Jamie Cullum and a band of six musicians distributed over three venues, each separated by distances of over 100 miles. This paper describes the general motivation of the event, the technical setup in terms of audio, video and 5G networking and the technical as well as artistic challenges overcome.