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Sony Music launches virtual backgrounds for Zoom calls

By | Published on Friday 26 June 2020

Rick Astley background

A lot of things have happened in recent months that we couldn’t have predicted at the beginning of the year. Whether the COVID-19 pandemic itself should be included on that list is debatable. That aside though, I think the big thing that this year will be remembered for is that it was in 2020 that you were finally able to get an official Rick Astley video conferencing background.

One effect of all this not going outside, of course, has been a new rise of the video call, as people try to find ways to stay in touch with friends, colleagues, family and other pub quiz teams. And while we all had several video calling options already available on our phones, for some reason we all started downloading the previously little known Zoom to facilitate all this extra video calling. Why? Well, “you can change your background” was one of the things people would eagerly tell you.

Now, of course, lockdown restrictions are being lifted and people can start to see friends, family and – possibly – pub quiz teams in the real world again. Plus the novelty of changing those backgrounds for each call has long since worn off. So, I think you’d all agree, now is the perfect time for Sony Music to launch a range of music-themed video conferencing backgrounds for you all to download.

Though, that said, getting this gimmick off the ground doesn’t appear to have involved all that heavy an investment in building a website or cropping the images to the right size – both of which appear to have taken around ten minutes. And Sony already owns all the artwork.

So, presumably, everyone in the digital marketing department has been too busy doing the online colouring thing they launched last month to spend too much time on this kind of thing.

The Rick Astley backdrop previously mentioned is actually one of the better ones. It places you against the location of the ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ video, which you will know, but which might not be immediately obvious to others on the call. In fact, you could make it the first question in your pub quiz!

Others simply feature album artwork from artists such as Britney Spears, Judas Priest, Nas, Nsync, Willie Nelson and the Wu-Tang Clan. That is a festival I would go to. There are also no less than three different Baby Shark backgrounds. Get yours at the Iconic Music Backgrounds website now.



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