James Blake and Roots Manuva have already streamed sets. You could even enjoy yacht-rocking beats from Will.i.am
It's Saturday night and you're sprawled on the sofa cradling a flagon of hazelnut Options, your flannel jammies inside a Slanket and under a duvet. You're supposed to be going out but you can't propel yourself out of the cushion nook.
Niggling, though, is the off-chance that tonight some new epicentre of awesomeness will be discovered, and you'll have to hear about "the best party ever, can't believe you missed it" for months. For five hours you're stuck in an anxious limbo between staying or going. Eventually the last bus leaves and you spend the rest of the night calling your friends to see if they're having fun. They don't pick up.
There's a name for this: Fomo, meaning Fear Of Missing Out. And as with all life's problems, the internet has a cure. Webcasting site Ustream has inspired a trend for online parties, where you can sit at home watching people having more fun than you.
Take the annual Fomo-fest that is New Year's Eve, a night spent constantly in fear you could be at a better party. If you had stayed in, cowered over your laptop, you could've seen the super-exclusive O-Bar party at Palm Beach, the Junkanoo parade in the Bahamas, and the ball drop on Times Square in 3D ? all at the same time.
It's a phenomenon the internet hasn't had a chance to sift through yet. Before you find a party worth spying on, you might have to trawl through a few greasy teenage DJs dicking about with pitch control, as well as the likes of Will.i.am, who recently live-streamed a DJ set of yacht-rock remixes live from Tokyo. He was mostly dicking about with the pitch control.
Eventually, though, you'll stumble upon Boiler Room, a site that takes DJs from the bleeding edge of the UK underground and puts them on at an invite-only secret location: basically a breeding ground for Fomo. James Blake, Girl Unit and Roots Manuva have already performed, often in tiny clubs, but to thousands watching at home on Ustream.
Boiler Room is different from the last settee-clubbing craze, "gigs" on Second Life. Then, the idea was to create an alternative to live music. The problem, as anyone who's stayed up watching Glastonbury on telly knows, is we probably don't like live music as much as we like getting twatted.
"I don't think there's anything exciting about watching us DJing in front of 40 hipsters in a freezing cold warehouse in Dalston," says Dan Foat, past Boiler Room curator and the man behind R&S Records. "It's more about creating a buzz around each show. The Boiler Room plays a very important part in the surrounding culture of underground electronic music."
Boiler Room doesn't attempt to replace going out. It's a new way of staying in that allows you to have it all: Take Me Out on the telly and a post-future garage soundclash on your laptop. You still won't be happy, but at least you'll know what you're missing.
Lorri Bagley Leslie Bega Maria Sharapova Lindsay Price Zoe Saldana
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