The Business Side of Second Life Music - Events Listings

Have you taken a look at the Events Calendar in "Live Music" lately? Over the past year or two, the number of events at almost any given time has been steadily increasing. While this is a great indication of a thriving music community, the listing system itself lacks in organization.

I made mention a few weeks ago about a conversation I had with a few people at LL offering a simple idea to address this growing problem. As you look at the "Live Music" listings, it is a jumble of Live music, DJ events, Track Singers, Tribute concerts etc. If you feel like going to a clubbing event with a kick ass DJ, then we shouldn't have to try to weed through 50 others that have nothing to do with what we're looking for. If we want to go see a live performance, where the artist is playing live and singing live, the same applies... same with track Singers, Tribute concerts, and so on.

The idea I proposed to Linden Lab is very simply to add a few levels of categorization. So under a top level Event header of say "Music", there can be a drop down for each category, Live Music, Track Singers, DJ Events, etc.

This will help in a few ways. First and most obvious is that it makes it easier to find what you're looking for.

Second, it makes it better for those who are putting on the events. With the new system, their events will be more highly visible and in the Category they need to be in.

Third, there's no reason a live performer should have to compete for a time slot and advertising space with a DJ event. They are two different genres of music/event.

In my opinion, implementing these minor changes (as they don't require a ton of code or hours and hours of programming) can make a HUGE difference in the overall Second Life experience, especially for new users who may not be entirely familiar with SL to begin with.

The Business Side of Second Life Music - Performing isn't Free!

It's no news that over the past few years, the economy is still in bad shape, not just here in the USA but globally. Its effects can be seen all over and similarly, in Second Life. Today I looked at the national average for gas prices on GasBuddy and it's almost $4.00 per gallon (at the time of writing this Blog). Lucky me, here in California we're at the top of that list at >$4.05 per gallon. As a good friend pointed out who lives in the UK "... where we pay $12 USD per gallon!"


There are many content creators (CC) in Second Life... fashion designers, animation creators, scripters, hair, shoes, on and on the list goes. These CC's provide something that SL residents purchase for $L which of course, equates to real money. NoLook at the time spent on creating a single pair of jeans for example. It could be a few hours or it could be more (in total amount of work). Once these jeans are done, the CC sets them for sale in their store(s) and if they know how to do a bit of marketing and if the jeans are of a good caliber and quality, they can sell for at least a few hundred $L... repeatedly.


Now let's take a look at a day in the life of a live performer in SL. There are performers who have to travel to a studio to hold their live performance and pay for studio time. For the sake of this example, let's take that travel time, studio costs and gas expense out of the equation for a minute. This performer has equipment like a guitar, which has strings, which most pros will change quite often. There is setup time, rehearsal time, writing new songs (as original artists do), learning new covers, purchasing backing tracks (for track singers). 

Brandy and I spend a good amount of time writing and sending out promos and marketing in Second Life, Facebook, blogs, the web, etc. for each and every performance/event I hold. Then the artist gets to the venue... early... because they have to setup the venue with their tip jar, group invite, etc. They then perform, usually for an hour, many playing free at tips only venues, hoping that the residents who have just spent $L1,000 on their avatar's hair will tip them a few hundred. Sadly, as I have experienced, most attendees do not tip. So an artist walks away after all this work and expense with maybe $10-$20.


Wait, it gets better. As I mentioned before, the jeans designer is done once they've finished designing and setting out their merchandise for sale. After that, each and every sale that comes in is what I like to call "cake".. A.K.A. recurring revenue or even Passive Income. They don't have to do any more work on those jeans that are already set for sale.


This is the major difference. An artist does not have that luxury of being passive with their work. They MUST constantly be engaging, looking for new shows and bookings, creating events, on and on the list goes as does the work for both artist, their booking agent, their manager and even hosts (all of which also need to be paid).

The short of it is, I am writing this blog because I am seeing some incredibly talented artists in SL, both veterans and new artists, busting their asses entertaining, showing people a great time and sadly, going unrewarded for their hard work. Why is it so hard for people to understand that artists are "working" too and that they too deserve to be paid for their work. Is the "content" that performers provide any less valuable than those jeans? Performing is a service and some artists do sell products in their CD's and other merchandise. So if nothing else, show your support by purchasing their merchandise.


I'll close this blog with a reminder $L250 = $1.00 USD


In SL you don't need to drive to a see your favorite live performers. You don't need to shower, get dressed, buy food or even buy drinks. That's a whole bunch of money saved. If everyone in attendance at a performance would tip one dollar to the venue and one dollar to the artist, things would change in a big way. So in essence, for two dollars, you CAN make a BIG difference! I've owned and operated businesses for most of my adult life and after over 5 years of performing live in Second Life, seeing things, watching and personally being on the front lines, you can trust that I do know a thing or two about it.


I certainly don't mean to come off in a bad light or stir up controversy here, but I have friends that are struggling and it frustrates the hell out of me when I see a very good artist walking away with $3.00 USD for a full one hour show and all the work that goes into it. Yes three dollars! As for the venues, well even more importantly, as they are the ones footing the bill for the residents' entertainment pleasure.


Let's all do our part to help keep live music alive and well in Second Life. PLEASE think about this and in the kind heart that I know you have, do the right thing.

Linden Realms: A First Look

I had a quiet day today and after speaking a bit with Brett Linden, he let me know that today was the Linden Lab rollout of Linden Realms. Well being the 5 year veteran to Second Life that I am, I HAD to have a look.


I started here: Destination Guide "Linden Realms"


This link takes you to the "Portal" to the portals (so to speak). As you'll see from this Destination Guide page, there a about 10 different areas to start from. I chose the first on called Degrand.

(Here are a few screenshots taken from the Destination Guide itself)

Now I'm not really into Dungeons and Dragons games or those kind of video games (remember Dragon's Lair?), so this whole thing about collecting crystals was a bit off for me but, what the hell! I teleported to Degrand and found myself among maybe 10-15 others pretty much just standing about. Well I was there to check things out. So off I go. First thing is to find where the heck I need to go. I cammed out and found an odd looking oval stone and watched one oman walk in and not come out. "Hmmmm" I thought. So I walked in and instantly was teleported to another location where i found the goal was to get to a workshop and find some colored crystals.

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There's more to it but I certainly don't want to spoil the fun for anyone. but I'll just say, the builds that I saw in Degrand and other Realms were VERY cool. There's definitely a vibe the builders were going for and boy did they get it. There are minor details that not everyone will catch consciously, but being a graphic/web designer myself, I made sure to look. There were animated fairies, very cool mushrooms, sculpties all over, great huts and medieval style houses and other builds.


I'll have to tell you, I am thinking very positively about Linden Realms. It can and probably will create a whole new level of fun and interaction among SL residents.


So on my initial journey to Linden Realms, I give it two thumbs up. Mostly for the extra time and effort obviously poured into these builds.


I think my next stop will be Helfell! I kinda like the name!

The Source C-C-C-CRASHHHH!!!

It seems lately that almost everywhere I play in Second Life, the venues are crashing. I'm not saying it's due to ridiculous attendance. No! That was the old days of Second Life. These days, tonight for example, like for the past few months, when 40 or 50 people are on a sim, it crashes.


It may be a matter of the servers, or some other "ghost in the machine", but no matter how you slice it, the problem is here and it doesn't seem like it's being addressed. I've heard from friends, fellow musicians and venue owners alike that this is a repeated occurence so it's not just me and my shows.


I WOULD like to give a hats off to Gargravarr Rau, owner of The Source. He provides Second Life with constant live shows at his venue but more than that, he was prepared with a contingency plan. Tonight, The Source sim crashed about 10 minutes into my show with about 40+ people there and within 10 minutes, we were up and running at Ground Zero, another friend's Second Life venue.

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I would urge all SL venue owners to take a cue from Gar. Have a back up plan ready to go for just such a situation and PLEASE keep an open line of communication open with the performer. Second Life performers do work hard at their craft, setting up, learning new music, writing new music, buying updated equipment, etc. there IS overhead, believe it or not and when a sim crashes and half the crowd doesn't come back, it will more than likely hurt the artists' and venues' revenue for the night.


So venue owners, please be prepared to quickly work together with your performing artists to get the show up and running quickly and I believe this will be somewhat of a bandage for the gash in the SL servers... temporarily at least.


I'm pretty sure Linden Lab is working to resolve the matter as my personal connections have told me but we'll just need to hang tight until we're back up to 100%. Second Life is my home away from home and I don't plan on going ANYWHERE!

Then came Second Life

Another band I had the fortune of touring with was called Mankind. Yes it's true. My initial motivation when starting my live music performances in Second Life over 5 years ago was to continue performing the music we wrote as a band.  Although I wrote the majority of the music and practically all lyrics, I cannot discount the amazing effort put forth by the three other musicians, friends and truly, brothers, who contributed their part. To be clear, when I say I wrote the music, what I mean is I would bring in a piece that I had written on acoustic or electric guitar along with the lyrics I had written. I did not write all the drums, bass, keyboards or lead guitar parts. Chris, JJ and Frank, respectively, did their part and how amazingly indeed they did.


At the end of about 10 years of writing, performing and being the brothers that we had become. I found myself wanting something different. It was the direction that I felt the band was headed, as a whole, that differed from where I felt I was going musically.
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Pretty much at that precise point in time, I found Second Life. For those of you who don't know what Second Life is all about, in a nutshell, it is a 3D Virtual Environment created by Linden Lab. Thikn about a piece of graph paper. Each little box represents a piece of land or a "Sim". On that Sim you can use the built in tools within Second Life to build, model, shape, form, texture, colorize, upload, etc. to create the sim you want to create. There are music venues, shopping (oh yes LOTS of shopping which we'll get to in a later post), fairs, skating... basically anything you can imagine in Real Life is probably on some Sim in Second Life.


So all that being said, when I first discovered Second Life in about August of 2006, I let it slide. Somehow I ended up rediscovering it in November and on November 6, 2006, "Mankind Tracer" was "rezzed".


A few days into it and I found there were DJ's and live performers streaming their live shows into Second Life. I thought "hey.. I can do that!" So I quickly found out it wasn't all that complicated. I bought a new mixer, a couple of pedals and did the door to door thing, looking for gigs. Quite quickly actually I was playing regular weekly shows. Now SLat that time was fairly new. There weren't many of us performing live but as time passed until today, there are now at least 30+ shows every hour. From live performers, to those singing live to backing tracks, to the many many genres available like rock, pop, oldies, country, jazz, you name it. Second Life has an amazingly vibrant and ever growing music scene.

Personally, I have been truly blessed with the global following I've attained. Even with my years of real life touring, I doubt I would have ever had the chance to reach this many people with my music.


So what started out with a desire to play my band's music ended up with me playing my stuff, the band's stuff, covers and making some great friends along the way.


To those of you that think of Second Life as simply a game...WOW!!! very far off. Second Life consists of avatars, and there are real people in real cities on a real planet behind those avatars. Just as in real life, we need to shop for ourselves and that has translated into SL as well. There are those in SL who design clothing for example and the fashion world in SL is a thriving, multimillion dollar annual business. Oh yes, you can earn money in SL too!


Which leads me to what's been happening the past year or so with the music side of things....