Pollstar (07/21/23) Borba, Ryan

CUE Audio provides lighting solutions for audiences at live events. CUE is used at over 800 events, mostly sporting events, each year; the company's core service facilitates coordinated illumination of attendees' phones to enhance the experience at key moments. “When you've got 70,000 people, even if just 7,000 participate, you'd get a really nice activation,” says CUE Audio co-founder Ira Akers. He credits the company's acoustic modem as the delivery mechanism for the light shows, which requires neither Wi-Fi nor mobile service. Akers describes the modem as “a medium to deliver data through sound. We have been able to do it at the Kansas City Chiefs' stadium where we're sending data all the way across the stadium, so it's a pretty long range and low latency.” Akers says the modem functions “as if your phone scanned a QR code and now it's doing exactly what it tells it to do. It shows images at a certain time, it does the lights and the strobe and our sparkle, different effects for the lights.” Using the app on tour is limited by persistent challenges, such as requiring participation from artist's teams, lighting directors and synchronizing between all the involved venues. “With tours having a lighting director, we take their input or we hand them the keys, but the onscreen content is always theirs unless they just don't have anyone to do it,” Akers explains. “Then we'll help with that.”

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