Snapchat's 'Crowd Surf' Stitches Everyone's Concert Videos To Form One Performance

Snapchat has introduced a new feature for its app that’s specifically made for watching concerts. Called “Crowd Surf,” the new Snapchat feature is able to turn quick clips of live concerts into a single watchable music video.

Snapchat’s Crowd Surf feature is already available on the Our Stories section of the app. More specifically, it was first spotted being tested for one of Lorde’s live performances during Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco, California. Crowd Surf uses artificial intelligence to stitch together Lorde’s performance from different angles while the music is played continuously.

Snap tested the feature out during Lorde’s performance of “Green Light” at the music festival. TechCrunch provided one example of this which can be viewed below.

While Lorde performed her songs, many of here fans put up their phones to start recording snaps. Snapchat combined those clips together to form a single video showing the concert from different angles. Users who want to watch Crowd Surf will have to go to Snapchat’s “Featured” section below their friends' recent stories.

The result is undeniably fun and creative, but it does heavily rely on people recording the same event. Lorde’s Crowd Surf video only featured the beginning of the song. In theory, however, Snapchat’s Crowd Surf could have stitched together a video showing the whole performance of the song if there was enough people taking snaps of it, as pointed out by Mashable.

Another problem with Snapchat Crowd Surf is how it cuts from one angle to another. The audio might be playing seamlessly, but footage cutting to different videos can be a bit disorienting. Some concert-goers taking videos might be jumping, while others are on the edge of the concert stage.

Crowd Surf is said to have been developed by Snap’s in-house research team, which used a proprietary machine learning technology. It uses geolocation and timestamps to piece together the audio and video, according to Business Insider.

Snapchat’s Crowd Surf for Lorde’s performance is just a test, but a Snap spokesperson did confirm to Mashable that it will be available in “select event coverage.”

Snapchat’s test for Crowd Surf might be for a concert performance, but it also has potential to be used for other types of events as well. For example, Crowd Surf could stitch together videos of a prominent public speaker, or a speech given out by a celebrity or politician.

This isn’t the first time that Snapchat has experimented with this type of coverage for its Stories feature. Snapchat once had Story Explorer, a feature where users could swipe up to view more snaps of the same event that they’ve just attended. Story Explorer was discontinued back in November 2016, but has now been replaced by Discover and Snap Maps.

Snap Inc’s introduction of Crowd Surf signals the company’s efforts in making sure its users keep watching content on the Snapchat app as Facebook has already successfully copied its Stories feature for the Facebook app, Messenger and Instagram.

Right now, it’s too early to tell how Crowd Surf will be received by Snapchat users, but it definitely is a unique new feature. Snapchat is also struggling to get new users on its app, and Crowd Surf might get more people’s attention.