Cantina is excited to announce our new partnership with two pioneers: Bose and the Newport Folk Festival®, all three of us working in harmony to fine-tune the festival experience. This 21st-century marriage of technology, design, and music brings to fruition a developing historical trend that goes back more than a generation:

• In 1959, the Newport Folk Festival® became the second modern music festival in America.
• In 1964, Bose was founded with the belief people deserve better sounding audio systems.
• In 2019, Cantina is bringing together these two innovative brands to reimagine the experience fans have with music and artists.

Our involvement with Newport Folk Festival® began six years ago, when we helped them create a digital festival companion to help fans find when and where their favorite artists were playing. With the resulting Newport Folk mobile app, 30,000+ attendees are now better able to focus on what matters: the music and the experience.

But, one of the continuing challenges for concert-goers at Newport Folk has been moving between their physical and digital worlds, reliant on their phones to get critical festival info, thus often distracted. This summer attendees will have the help of Bose AR: a first-of-its-kind audio augmented reality platform that you have to hear to believe. Using Bose AR Frames, which fit like lightweight eyewear, festival-goers will be able to receive location-aware audio notifications to help keep track of coveted artists and to learn about special unannounced performances before anyone else.

Through the use of Bose AR, concert-goers will now have the ability to move more efficiently around the festival grounds as they receive schedule notifications and early access alerts triggered by time, beacons placed throughout the Festival, and GPS. The notifications will also let fans know who’s playing next at their current stage location. Less time checking the schedule means more time enjoying the music.

In addition to those benefits, selected tracks from last year’s and this year’s festival will be transformed into a 3D audio experience via the Newport Folk app.

At the Bose trailer, Bose and Cantina will showcase Bose AR Frames and various AR-enabled wearables for retail. Fans may go to the Bose pop-up and demo a pair of Frames with live-streaming audio powered with Bose AR technology. Those waiting for a space at the limited capacity venue will be able to listen to live music happening at the Museum stage and streaming music from esteemed Newport Folk Festival artists.

To close the loop, we are also undertaking field research during the Festival to better understand consumer sentiment and reaction to the technology to inform ongoing retail innovation and activation.

Cantina’s cutting edge engineering capability paired with Bose’s design and tech expertise supports the underlying vision of Bose AR which is to: live heads up, phones down.

Folk on!

If you’d like to learn more about Cantina’s partnership with Bose and Newport Folk Festival®, or our work more broadly, we’d love to hear from you.