Has your favorite musician died? Stick around long enough and he or she will surely make an appearance again via hologram. At the rate things are going, and for the right "appearance" fee of course, you may eventually invite your own hologram Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer to perform at your wedding or other private event.

The "virtual performance" business kicked off in April when Dr. Dre debuted a hologram of Tupac Shakur on-stage at Coachella. As Entertainment Weekly notes, that was followed by plans to resurrect Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes for live shows and the re-creation of Elvis for a concert series.

It also got the Jackson family talking about whether they should bring Michael back on the road — after all, he's already on the comeback trail with Pepsi this summer as part of its (ironically) "Live For Now" marketing campaign.Continue reading...

It's a well known fact that the brand value of dead celebrities lives far beyond the celebrities themselves. Bob Marley may have died in 1981, but his name has made him immortal, at least in terms of earning power. Elvis continues to have perennial brand presence, getting an extra boost from Graceland's year-long celebration of his life in this, the 35th anniversary of his death.

But this past weekend, a whole new form of dead celebrity worship came to life at the Coachella music festival in California. On Sunday night, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog performed "live" on stage with Tupac Shakur, the rapper who was killed in 1996. Of course, Dre and Snoop performed live; Tupac's performance was a holographic video with updated audio tailored to the crowd. Still, the image was so seemingly alive and so stunning that it may prompt a Tupac tour, according to The Wall Street Journal.Continue reading...