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Run the Jewels premiered a 360-degree music video in the New York Times VR app

Run the Jewels premiered a 360-degree music video in the New York Times VR app

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The New York Times Magazine's first-ever Music Issue is out today, and along with it, the Times has released two new videos on its VR app. The first features Los Angeles group The Internet recording inside frontwoman Syd Tha Kyd's home studio. The second is a 360-degree video from Run the Jewels, for their new song "Crown." You can watch both inside the NYT VR app.

360 the Jewels

The idea of a virtual reality music video is not new; The Weeknd and Bjork have both recently released 360-degree VR music videos similar to Run the Jewels'. But with a song like "Crown," which is dark and complex, an immersive video featuring 360-degree thunderstorms and automatic weapons only deepens the (slightly unsettling) experience.

The Times has been experimenting with virtual reality for almost a year now. The publication began creating short films with Vrse back in April of 2015, but didn't release its first VR film, "The Displaced," until November. All print subscribers received a free Google Cardboard with their newspaper delivery that month to encourage subscribers to download the VR app. Earlier this year, the Times made a virtual reality newsreel of the 2016 presidential campaign.

The videos are available to download on the NYT VR app for iOS and Android. You'll need a headset like Google Cardboard to watch in virtual reality, but non-Cardboard owners can also see the clips as 360-degree mobile videos.

Correction: NYT VR videos are also available outside VR.