The next “Big Game”, Super Bowl LIV, is happening on Sunday, February 2. Which of course means another high-profile halftime show as well.
This year it will be headlined by artists Jennifer Lopez and Shakira. But if you can’t make it to watch the halftime show live, the National Football League (NFL) has you covered — as long as you use one of the major music streaming services out there. The league announced today (via Billboard) that it will be bringing the halftime performances to services like Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, and others, as a “visual album”. It’s billed as “real-time”, but that’s not exactly the case.
According to the NFL, each of the musical performances at this year’s Super Bowl will be packaged as a visual album and released “shortly after” the performance itself at the game. That includes the National Anthem sung by Demi Lovato, Yolanda Adams singing America the Beautiful, and, of course, the halftime show featuring the aforementioned Lopez and Shakira.
You’ll be able to buy the visual album, too. It will go up for pre-sale today. The original report says folks can buy the album via Apple Music. It’s called Super Bowl LIV Live.
With the abundance of technology in today’s world, it was extremely important to us that we are able to share the ground-breaking Super Bowl performances with our fans across the globe after they occur,” said Brian Rolapp, evp and chief media & business officer. “This visual and audio album is the first of its kind and will allow fans to experience the greatness of the artists’ performance on Super Bowl Sunday at their fingertips and across multiple platforms anytime they choose so.
This is a pretty cool idea, especially for the folks out there who might not really care about the game itself, but rather everything else around it — like the commercials and movie trailers. Being able to see a visual album of all the performances at this year’s Super Bowl is a nice way to embrace the streaming services out there, too.