Ravinder Sidhu and his sister Nav travelled to Toronto from India to see Sidhu Moose Wala’s Signed to God world tour kick off at Scotiabank Arena last Friday, dropping $550 each on tickets. They knew it would be no ordinary performance.
That’s because the Canadian-Punjabi rapper died in 2022 after gunmen fired a hail of bullets into a vehicle he was in near his hometown in Northern India. A hologram replaced Moose Wala on stage Friday, testing the technology’s ability to deliver a memorable fan experience at a premium price.
“Maybe it will be futuristic,” Ravinder told CBC News outside the venue before the show. “We can’t express it. We’re over-excited.”
Another fan, Harry Singh, says he spent $270 for his ticket, plus airfare from California.
“If you waited until last minute, that same ticket I got is now like $1,500,” Singh told CBC News hours before the show. “I got pretty lucky. I bought them early.”
Some tickets for the Toronto show advertised online cost nearly $2,000 before taxes and fees. Prices for the next stop in Vancouver on Thursday are similar.
“They’re saying it’s going to look like it’s completely real, but we’ll find out,” Singh said.
In a text message after the show, he says the concert featured an unreleased song called Rebirth, and an on-stage appearance by the late rapper’s younger brother. In one video he recorded during the show, Singh is seen surrounded by a sea of smartphones held in the air as people sing along with the crowd and the hologram of Moose Wala on stage.
Sidhu Moose Wala, a Canadian-Punjabi rapper who was shot and killed in northern India in 2022, appeared on stage as a hologram during a concert on Friday, Oct. 9, 2026 at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena. (Submitted by Harry Singh)
From ABBA to Ozzy
Music journalist and historian Alan Cross says the rise of digital-first performances is real. He points to the commercial success of ABBA Voyage in London, which features de-aged digital avatars of the Swedish pop group performing with a live 10-piece band.
A cohort of aging rock stars, the transfer of musical catalogues into the hands of savvy investors, and modern audiences accustomed to the digital world are all things he says will contribute to the growing holographic concert trend.
“Not only do artists become stubbornly dead, but they also get tired. They want vacations. They want to spend time with their families,” Cross told CBC News in an interview.
“In the next five years we’re going to see a mass extinction event with all these rock and roll heroes and music heroes that we’ve known our entire lives,” he said.
He noted that though their deaths are inevitable, technology can give them a second life on stage because “we’re raising a new generation of people who live digitally.”
David Nussbaum, founder of Los Angeles-based hologram company Proto says using the technology to bring back stars who have died “makes a lot of sense.”
“We’re working with Jack and Sharon Osborne right now to bring back Ozzy, who passed just about a year ago.”
Nussbaum calls his company’s recreation of the Black Sabbath frontman an “agentic AI avatar.” Not only does it possess encyclopedic knowledge of Osbourne’s work and public life, he says it can speak to fans in languages the real rock star never knew.
“If you’re Chinese and you ask that question in Chinese, he’s gonna answer you in Chinese. If you’re Italian, and you asked him that question in Italian, he’s going to answer you in Italian,” he said.
He says that with hundreds of dialects available, fans can communicate with their favourite artists, living or dead, in the language of their choice. “This is the ultimate form of connecting.”
Once the stuff of fiction, people have been developing this technology for entertainment purposes for years.
Flash back to 14 years ago, when another famous rap star murdered in his prime was digitally resurrected for thousands of fans at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Rapper Snoop Dogg, left, and a hologram of the late rapper Tupac Shakur perform onstage during the third day of the 2012 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Field in Indio, Calif. (Christopher Polk/Getty Images)
“I don’t think I’m the only one who watched that video of Tupac Shakur at Coachella in 2012,” said tech expert Carmi Levy.
“It almost felt like lightning had struck the entertainment and tech industries at the same time,” said Levy, noting that the experience of viewing video hadn’t changed much for generations until that Coachella set, which “used some very cutting-edge techniques for the time.”
He also noted that the quality of the technology has improved a lot since 2012, and continues to evolve with advancements in artificial intelligence.
What’s next?
Proto’s Nussbaum agrees and says his company aims to “seamlessly integrate” realistic, AI-powered holograms into the real world.
Proto’s products include a life-sized holographic display units that project photorealistic, 4K volumetric people or objects inside a light box, allowing subjects to beam in live, or interact with AI avatars.
“The olden days of hologram performances were mostly magic tricks and theater and fun experiences. But now, this technology, although it’s being used quite a bit in music and entertainment, most of the time it’s been used in enterprise,” he told CBC News.
“It’s being used by doctors to beam into rural remote clinics, where patients are having trouble finding expert doctors and health care providers. It’s being used by educators to beam onto lecture stages from all over the world, without having to get onto an airplane and fly to a college or university. It’s been used in museums. It’s being used in lots of different settings.”
Nussbaum’s company is also expanding the celebrity hologram experience off the stage.
He says Proto recently worked with Bon Jovi during the band’s residency at New York’s Madison Square Garden to create what it called an interactive hologram of rock star Jon Bon Jovi so fans could pose for realistic-looking photos.
Levy says it’s only a matter of time before consumers can enjoy holographic experiences at home.
“If you look at the typical smartphone today, which has photo and video capabilities that would have made an advanced photographer and videographer blush just a few years ago, it’s easy to appreciate that at some point, advanced 3D AI capabilities — holographic capabilities even — will ultimately be built into the multimedia capabilities of a smartphone, or whatever it is that replaces it,” he said.
“The industry is certainly heading toward that point.”
