Second Life Needs a Live Music Blog

I've been going around and sampling lots of live music lately. Interestingly, one success of the SL8B for me was getting me interested in SL live music again. I was actually sad when the sims went down and I couldn't spend every night hopping around to live acts and interesting displays on the SL8B continent. I liked the music pavillions that were built, whether New-Age Singularity or 19th Century Victorian Park in style.

But here's the thing about live music in SL -- a lot of it is god-awful.

I mean -- really awful. Ouch ouch ouch.

No one ever really talks about this, the way you never really talk about how bad some of the fashion or prefabs are (there isn't any Regretsy type page for SL, although there well could be) because you don't want to Hurt Anyone's Feelings. You don't want to Cause Drama. You give everybody "A" for effort and install a grading curve because they are plucky amateurs online, singing their heart out for pennies, right?

Yet there are bloggers -- chief among them Hamlet ne Linden Au -- who claim that some SL singers reach the status of real-life stars -- or should -- and that there is some really high-quality stuff in SL. No doubt there is. But it will never be encouraged and emboldened if we keep up the fiction that everybody is a plucky amateur, singing their heart out for pennies, and we should play along with their Second Life RP and never state the obvious. Right?

Because, of course, that's what it is -- RP. Like a lot of -- most of? -- SL is RP. You know, RP of the sort like I'm an online bed & breakfast owner with a great little business that will enable me to survive in my retirement *cough* -- instead of a kind of curious online labor-intensive time-sucking self-paying hobby lol.

RP goes deep in SL, especially around the idea of "business" -- and in the case of every singer in SL, they are running a little business. I'm reminded of the tasteless Huffpo blog that went up after Amy Winehouse died, but that's about the size of it. The Start-Up of You.

There aren't any music blogs that I'm aware of (and I don't mean a page that an individual performer may have up -- I mean music criticism). There are people like Fatty Mariner who write about music performances but...not really. By the time you scrape away the fat-o-grams about his latest diet failure or success and what he just ate for lunch or dinner, all you have left are some very pretty pictures of people playing their fake guitars in SL. There isn't any *assessment* of the music other than "Yay! My simulated friend plays music and we all dance!"

And speaking of fake guitars, I do want to point out that I don't care if someone is basically singing karaoke. I'm not at all a snob about singing with a sound track because I don't aspire to high culture. One of the greatest gifts of SL8B to me was turning me on to the work of David Guetta. Yes, I am very late to the party, but now, a day doesn't go by that I don't play Memories by David Guetta and Kid Cudi at least 10 times, and all the other good ones of his.I love fake concocted music made out of people's synthesizers and automatic keyboard sounds as much as the next person, it's all good.

I do realize there is a great divide in SL regarding those who play canned stuff like that and sing along, and the people singing "real music" of their own. There is so much of a divide, that some of the performers with original tunes of their own and the ability to play multiple instruments will caution you that they themselves have layed down their tracks that are all original and they themselves sing to them -- just so you don't lump them in the same category as Those Other Awful People.

Of course, it might seem better to have someone playing real-life with their actual unaccompanied voice and their actual guitar, but some of them are so bad, that having someone with a sound track who is a professional and knows how to maximize the use of a back-up like that will always sound better -- and I'll pick their concerts to go to every time over the strugglers.

After all, every time you hear a Dead concert tape, you realize how young kids today just don't know how to improvise on guitar, and nobody plays improv anymore. Finding someone in SL who does this is a rare pleasure.

But...I mean, some of the stuff is just awful. It involves people who literally cannot carry a tune in a basket (or as they say in Russian, "A bear stepped on their ear.") They struggle with keeping their voice aligned to their sound track, which makes it even more painful and embarassing. You wonder if some of them are getting tips of sympathy -- or perhaps to make them stop.

And...the repertoire. Maybe these choices are made in the belief that they are "crowd-pleasers," but have they taken a poll?

I don't mind if somebody like Debi Latte resurrects Tommy James and the Shondells from my 6th grade playground, she you can set it up and sing "I think we're alone now" with a touch of humour.

But somebody disinterring "Honey" from her 1968 cemetery is grave robbery. There are some songs that were awful when they were number one, and you only compound the awfulness by resurrecting them and better to "remember them as they were."

BTW, can you remember the first song you ever heard? Of course, there's your mother's lullabyes, that would be the first song. I recall this song, which is an Alfred Lord Tennyson poem set to music:

SWEET and low, sweet and low,
    Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
    Wind of the western sea!
Over the rolling waters go,
    Come from the dying moon, and blow,
Blow him again to me;
    While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps

 The next song I remember is the 1944 ditty Mairzy Doats, which was still going strong when my father came back from the Korean war in 1955 and around for me to be born and hear it in 1959. I first heard it sung to me by a taunting big kid, age about 11, and the gimmick worked on me at age 3 pretty well -- I didn't realize he was singing about mares eating oats until it was explained. Then there was that other anthropomorphic hit of that year (1959) I remember as well -- Frank Sinatra's High Hopes, with its ant moving the rubber tree.

BTW, if you ever want proof that Wikipedia is run by joy-killing nerds, read the High Hopes entry:

The song describes a few impossible scenarios, where animals do seemingly impossible acts. For example, an ant moves an entire rubber tree by itself, while a ram single-handedly knocks down a dam. The lyrics refer to a "billion kilowatt dam", which would be a terawatt dam. As a comparison, China's Three Gorges Dam will only produce 2% of that amount (22.5 GW) when all generators are in place.

Sigh.

Then, I remember the first song I ever heard on a 78 RPM record -- it was a song without lyrics with a name like "The River" which made me think of Niagara Falls (I don't know what this tune was, but I can still see the big record spinning). If anyone can Name that Tune you will settle a long-time puzzle.

Then, the next song I ever heard on a 45 RPM: in 1960, the 1958 hit Chantilly Lace. Then, the first 45 I ever bought with my own allowance money: in October 1963, I Want to Hold Your Hand which I bought at Morgan's in Penn Yan, NY, which you can still see standing by the railroad tracks on Google Maps, but it may be closed by now. Then, the first 33 1/3 album I bought: Quicksilver Messenger Service's Happy Trails in 1969.

It's an experiment you should try -- recall your first heard song, your first purchased record -- or if you are the new generation, your first pirated illegal download, eh?

There are no doubt a lot of songs from my early youth that are lost to time as they were never put on records or tapes or later mp3s. But nowadays people think nothing of having "20,000 songs in the cloud" on Google music.

And musicians on Second Life have a song list of 100 and can hand it out to you.

Of course, with wildly divergent tastes, you can't expect every musician to please everyone. Fly around SL with the media enabled and sound on, and it's like driving out west through all the radio stations or having a particularly fussy front-seat station-changer. You will hear completely divergent tastes from Zen and Soma and Drone Zone sort of stuff to Hip Hop and R&B and heavy metal and weepy college emo and folk songs -- all in the space of 10 sims.

Or Heavy-Metal-Plays-College-Emo like Guns 'n Roses' "Patience" ("Say sugar make it slow"), the quintessential philandering and patronizing boy friend song, i.e. "be patient with me while I decide whether I love you or not and want to settle down with you instead of playing the field some more."

It's funny how some of the most popular Heavy Metal songs are actually their College Emo tunes. Take "Nothing Else Matters".

Every night in SL, I think it's safe to say that we get at least one rotation of "Nothing Else Matters" and "Patience". Understood. They're popular.

But...do you have to sing them so terribly? I mean, maybe you have a better future as a DJ? If you are turning on all those tracks anyway, you know?

To be sure, there are some good singers in SL that sing original music. But how can you find them? There are no blogs that separate the good from the awful and really awful. You could be silent about the awful in the usual SL RP we all indulge in. But you could accentuate the good.

I have a feeling I understand why such a blog has never come into being, even though fashion blogs of the more critical sort do exist: because it would be too hard not to be bitingly critical. The stuff is so bad. I mean, maybe you need to go listen on Youtube to how Black Velvet was originally sung -- in tune? In 1988, by the Canadian singer Alannah Mylse.

I'm not going to say a thing about lag. Lag is not the issue. I actually never once experienced lag in hopping to about 30 different shows. Maybe that's because there were only like...eight people...at some of the concerts. Or because even when there *are* 40-50, the private island sims could hold 100, so what's the complaint. Even during SL8B when some of the sims were very full, they weren't chock-full, and other than the issue of seeing scripted things "fly", I didn't think it was so terrible. I mean, what am I doing at a concert besides standing there, perhaps clicking on a dance anim, and listening? It's not as if I'm trying to build a house or walk all around?

But actually...just standing and listening isn't what a lot of people *are* doing. In fact, I understand a little better now why they can stand such awful music. For one, they aren't actually listening to it. More than once, I had a fellow audience member confess to me that they had SL sound muted and were listening to their own i-tunes and chatting with friends in the other windows (!). Well, why were they there, then? Well, just to support the singer. You know, that plucky amateur that is singing their heart out. Maybe they are a friend. Maybe they admire her or him. Maybe they like the pole dancers. Yes, it's kinda funny to come to a show that seems to promise C&W and folk and R&B mix-ups and find...pole dancers, but what works, works. And that's it -- these are clubs, and people come to them for hook-ups. And that's fine. They'd rather come to a nice atmosphere with at least some sort of ambience going that isn't some disgusting Bukakke sort of scene or gigunda boobs thrust in your face as you arrive at an artificial "clothing optional" beach laden with newbie gogglers.

The clubs that have these less-than-stellar performers in the "Live Music" tab instead of the "Adult" search enabled are clubs that are simply nicer places to be, where there is more normal conversation and romance -- and so people come to them to dance and kid around and hang out and hook up in a nicer atmosphere. Good! That keeps these places in business -- and it's another side of the "live music" scene you can't really criticize or tamper with -- if somebody has some treacly warmed over 1960s or 1980s music act out to draw you to your dating life in SL, you can only support the venue, right?

I'm also not going to demand that the Lindens "do something". The Lindens can't "do something". Much of the music is pirated. Much of the songs covered do not involve license fees paid to the original artists. More practically, much of the music is awful. The Lindens have their standards. They could finally come around to supporting the arts in LEA because they could identify some stand-out 3-D artists -- or maybe those artists just lobbied them enough. There have been numerous people to lobby about music and complain about it, but they seldom bite the bullet on the piracy issue, and they never, ever talk about the quality problem. If they did, it would unravel the whole ball of yarn. And there is perhaps no need to unravel it...

And that brings me to another problem of the whole Live Music scene that makes it difficult even where it's at its best -- the need to get tier paid, and the business model of most club owners -- tips for the venue, combined with maybe a few vendors selling stuff. The more organized music entrepreneurs have several sims tacked together with at least a mall selling items more seriously, and also maybe beach condos or skyboxes or something to round out the revenue.

I can't believe most of them make tier with the tips. Just look at the size of the crowd. Let's say we have even an ideal 30 people on a sim, that over the course of the evening, might make up 50. Let's say each puts in $250 -- actually more than most will put in, as many people still think of $100 as a sizeable tip in SL. That's a grand total of US $46.25 for that hour's work. That might seem like a lot, although a musician will have some costs -- their Shoutcast stream for example.

"Dropping the stream in 1, 2, 3," each musicians tells you at the end of their show -- and they've dropped something out of their revenue for that, as well.

If you're an amateur musician who by day is a helpdesker of a Home Depot worker, making an additional $40 a night might seem like a good thing. But if you don't have that day job, even if you did two shows a day and made $92.50, that's not enough to live on. $2800 a month of having to play two shows a night to try to barely get $100 a day is subsistence living in most cities. It won't cover your rent in many places; it might cover rent and a bit of food in some cities especially if you have room mates, but what about all your other expenses? Car, health insurance, health care, clothing, etc. etc.

But these hard-working musicians aren't making $40 a show because we're not all putting in L$250 and they're not always getting 50 people a show. In real life, you would go to a bar, pay $7 or $10 cover, and sit for four hours. But in Second Life, neither the venue owner or the musician has the luxury, with rare exceptions, to go over an hour or even just 50 minutes -- because you won't tip them twice, or the venue, and they will still only get your lousy $250 -- or 92 cents, less than a dollar at current exchange rates. In real life, we pay local bar covers of $5-10 -- and then we buy beer and keep the bar owner in revenue (and he gets a cut of the cover too). But in SL, we pay $1 to the singer, and perhaps 50 cents to the owner, as we can't drink beer obviously -- and that means he has to figure out how to get tier paid.

Part of the reason people pay only $250 -- or more likely $100 -- is because the music isn't any good. And they are paying out of solidarity for pluckiness and bravery, not music.

But even where the musician is good and has tips, too, the reality is, the venue owner doesn't get $40 a day or $1200 a month from which to easily pay his $295 a sim tier. He probably gets a third of that and thus barely breaks even -- and he probably has to pay the musician a fee. I have no idea what these fees are from venue owners to musicians -- this is one of the most closely-guarded secrets of SL. But given how many clubs come and go, given how hard the club owners hustle you to tip, given the other expenses the club owners have to have (payment of at least some kind of salary, even in SL terms, to greeters, bouncers, builders, etc.), I'm going to wager a guess that venue owners aren't getting rich, and are probably subsidizing their crazy hobby.

It's so hard to make a buck -- and then you have the Stone Soup climate of Second Life with its fetishization of open source -- like this guy undercutting the market in DJ request devices.

BTW, some venues have lovely builds, but by and large, they suck. Why is that? They go cheap in order to avoid lag? But you can build with less than 512 m textures and still make pretty builds, no? I see a lot of photorealistic scenes of sunsets or animals that are just stupid to put out in SL which has its own built-in landscaping and sunsets that are in scale and more beautiful in inworld terms than any photorealism. I see boards with fake grass and beach on them instead of just going on a real beach sim (what, they're more expensive? it's true a fair number of clubs seem to be on mainland). I see crappy little cut-out figures at bars and cheap uploaded crappy textures -- why?

Once I found a wonderful build -- a blues club -- in Atlas. Naturally contoured to the rocky hillside, beautifully constructed. Now...why was this experience so wonderful? Could it be that there was no music playing when I came, and the place was empty lol?

Some of the sims have the look and feel of an American Apparel ad, where that guy who runs AA seems to have a sex fetish for 1970s rec rooms with faux wood panel, Naugahyde couches and polyester shag rugs.

But, see above -- that's because the owners realize that the patrons are there not for the music but the hookups? And that's ok. If your patrons want the look and feel of a 1970s rec room, then by all means, give the customer what he wants.

To be sure, I've seen every conceivable kind of venue -- underground caves, mountain eyries, even spaceships. So there's a lot of imagination out there. But again -- unseen, as we have no music blog.

I'm suspecting that we will not get a music critics' blog, as we haven't had one in 7 years. And that's because if you look too close at the amateur hour that is Second Life, it will crack and crumble and reveal itself to be even more awful than what I'm somewhat charitably describing here.

I realize after hearing how bad it can get is that someone like Grace McDunnough (whom I don't like for her politics and "Thought leadering", and whose style of singing I don't care for) can be a real stand-out, simply for being able to carry a tune and knowing something about how to phrase her singing professionally. Those stand-outs are so distinguished from the usual run-of-the-mill SL embarassment singing, that we find them stars. Maybe if we heard them in real life, they wouldn't hold up?

Yet some of the stars of SL *do* play real life gigs as well, like Beth Odets -- for whom there are numerous concerts in support of now to help her pay for brain surgery -- and they hold up in real life. My favourites -- Frogg Marlowe and Jaycatt Nino seem to be real-life quality professionals but that may be a matter of my own taste. Even so, I think they continue to be among the most popular, although seldom mentioned by Hamlet for some reason.

As much as I love F&J, they, like other acts in SL, suffer from too much repetition of material and little new original material. I have an enormous tolerance for repetition myself, probably more than most, but even I find myself staying away after while.

Yet I can't blame any SL musician, talented or not talented, for repetition -- because of the economics I've just outlined. If you are taking home only $10-20 a show -- which is really the more realistic tip amounts than $40 as I've indicated in an idea world where everyone puts in $250 or roughly a dollar -- then you will have to play many, many gigs over and over again. And you can't possibly be expected to be generating new material every every month -- you likely have your day job to go to, and you likely have to have a stock repertoire that you've practiced and is successful if you are going to ensure yourself tips.

In fact, a musician constantly writing new material that the audience is unfamiliar with could actually be punished in SL. People like things to be the same, and predictable -- what a lot of people like about Second Life isn't its vast depths of innovation and creativity but the fact that they never have an objective reason to change their shirt, and their house is always EXACTLY the way they left it since they first put it out five years ago.

Musicians realize that repetition is what people like, as they can request favourite songs and feel interaction with someone -- they could do that with a Youtube or i-tunes search, but not with someone who warmly recalls something about them and calls them by name. The heart of each SL Live Music show is that live interaction between the musician and the audience members that is missing in real life - in real life, the guy doesn't thank you by name for a tip in the tip jar.

In fact, the musicians actually running small businesses that are viable have gotten this repetition thing down to a science. They will play clubs but they'll also play mall openings, somebody's birthday, special occasions, rentals venues where the owner wants some "life" to try to draw in customers. They will play anywhere, anytime. They come very organized -- with a board they put up next to their fake microphones and fake-guitar-strumming 'toons that has not only a notecard about them, but a tip jar capacity, and also the ability to join their group via Subscribomatic, so a group slot isn't lost. They have greeters they hire or who are volunteer fans that personally greet each person and ask them if they want to be in the group -- and frankly, if you don't capture somebody for the group, then you won't be able to lure them into the next show, chances are, because you are competing on an events listing space in the view that has hundreds of people sometimes on the same few hours. Even when you want to find a group you like by time slot, you have to do a lot of peering and scrolling and may give up -- the Subscribomatic reminds you when the star you like is playing and you can just tp there on the landmark they shoot you -- this is one of the innovations that has developed especially during the viewer 2.0 debacle, when for something like a year (!) events simply didn't work -- you couldn't search on them to get time and place. Now you can.

In short, when Wiz Nordberg said very wisely that Second Life doesn't have the economy (yet) to sustain live television, he might have been saying the same thing about live music. There's a lot more that live music could try of the sort he tries -- more ad boards, more sponsors that are easily gained by some automatic process (imagine if I could automatically sponsor a singer as easily as I could click on a subscrib-o-matic). Lack of a critical music blog is part of that advancement, but as long as SL remains a rec room for people to practice karaoke while their friends hook up, it's going to be hard to get to the next stage.

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Ann Otoole InSL]

There is a group called "Live Music Enthusiasts" if you want the continual stream of performance announcements.

[cube inada]

music events have always been the great "waisted use" of SL.. mainly becuase of the financial models employed... either too few avatars can attend or too little is charged per head via the 30 cent linden dollar mistake...they should have from day one made it 1 dollar to dollar of "value"..but again thats IF you want to run a platform . not a fantasy game, and LL always wanted it both ways and got it that way untill this last 2 years when it all had to unravel..

btw- some lessons in vr music from this long running site might be learned... run by Monkees vet Mike Nesmith..but probably more of a hobby as well for them...

http://blog.koinup.com/2010/03/virtual-world-videoranch3d-where-music.html

not sure if it ever really grew out as a viable "place" or "service"...

oh. first "i bought it myself" albums..were "goodbye yellow brick road" and "the Whos Tommy' in about 75..when i got my first "stereo hi fi" ..made by SOUNDDESIGN...another dead US maker of actual stuff....my father "used to" do their graphic design, annual reports. etc.... but that was another century ago.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

As to the question is such a blog/forum needed? Yup. Plenty of people have questions related to live performing in SL.

All you have to do is have someone that knows what they are talking about make it and make sure a link to it is posted in all the right places (like the above mentioned group and associated venues).

There may be one and it is just not well advertised.

[Argus Collingwood]

If we had a critic in the tradition of John L. Wasserman or Joel Selvin [San Francisco Chronicle] it would be great however I do think it would be Critic RP in SL. There are simply too many events and musicians to check out. Events like SL8B and Burn are a great places to checkout acts. Clubs that support SL Live Acts do have a lot of tier issues. We tell folks to tip the talent instead;-) We have a club because we love music and can provide our family and friends with a fun safe place to interact but only hold events 5 days a week between 4-7 PM slt. Feel free to stop by.

[Dizzy Banjo]

Great post Prokofy. Yours is one of the last remaining blogs I continue to read about SL . I feel a bit sad that intelligent blog discussion about it seems to have disintegrated. Maybe I'm just not aware where it is.

I think you are right about many things. As you know I haven't had as much time as I'd like to do projects in SL for a while now. But I suspect the live music scene isn't that different to it was in 2008.

I think a critical music blog would be good. Of course it would stir things up and create massive drama ;-)

The economic argument you make is clearly a very strong factor. I think it would deter a lot of musicians from trying SL at all.

In terms of professionalism I think SL does have some musicians that are very high quality. But spread thin amongst a huge number of amateur level musicians. However there isn't really a reason why they shouldn't use some SL venues as a good training ground.

I was never really a performer in SL. I very rarely perform in RL - I'm much more of a composer / producer. I did do a few performances, like the one I did for Robin when she left, but in general I actually found the experience unrewarding. I felt a lack of connection to the audience. Compared to the connection in a real gig it felt clinical.

I actually much preferred the connection I had through other people's avatars interacting together using my builds.

[Prokofy Neva]

BTW this is an interesting cite that cube3 referenced:

http://blog.koinup.com/2010/03/virtual-world-videoranch3d-where-music.html

He's doing this not in SL but Active Worlds, and he makes the point that he is piping in video of live performers, not having the puppeteering.

Well, hmm. That's possible now in SL too of course with shared media.

But I actually want "the puppets". I realize while they are playing their real instruments they aren't "in" their avatar. But the fact that they walk around and talk and do normal things in SL and interact as well in the context of the inworld world means something.

[melponeme_k]

Most, if not all, the "live music" shows I've seen in SL are Karaoke efforts. So I've stopped attending any of them.

When it comes down to it, real musicians and motivated amateurs are out in the world hustling for flesh audiences. Doing it in SL for people who don't even want to tip is not a place to build a self supporting hobby/career.

As far as my first 45, it was Captain & Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together". *cringe* Thank heavens my parents at least had The Allman Brothers in their collection or I would have been a lost soul. I blame that 45 on the fact that I was barely past babyhood. I didn't know any better!

[Prokofy Neva]

"Love Will Keep us Together" sounds PERFECT for the SL Music scene. Thanks!

[Celestiall Nightfire]

*This* is the type of blog post that draws me here. Witty and informative. Excellent analysis of the SL music scene.

A critical look at the SL music scene would bruise feelings, of this, I have no doubt. There is quite a bit of pretend and bolstering of friends amongst the SL music scene. Which is fine, because as you say, it is really a bit of RP.

Yet, despite the inevitable fall-out that would occur with a music-critic-type-blog, I'd read it, *if* the blogger posted real reviews both positive and critical. (Not pandering fluff pieces, which is what I see bloggers do when reviewing clothing, furniture, and miscellaneous SL creations)

(Edited to add: First music I remember is Ravel's bolero. My parents mostly played classical music, and that orchestral piece embedded itself into my mind. Beyond that, the first pop type song I can recall is Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World"...and I thought for the longest time that the song was called "Jeremiah was a bullfrog" : )

[cube inada]

i also think the "inworld 3d puppets" IS important.... SPACE JUNKEY.... had a band thing going.. had a spacey sim, a link to sony via some "DYI" music website that sony did as remenats of a failed flash app...;) typical sony..lol
they also sold spacey ships and fashions etc... had a "manager' etc...

they got some Press. etc but alas im sure they failed to make any profits worth the continueing costs of being in SL ... once the "novlety press" wore off a few years ago...

they were a bit "crystals and singularities" for me...lol so one has to wonder about a larger mainstream audience etc ever showing up... but the few in world shows i dropped into wee marred by .01 frame rates with 40 avatars etc...stop frame dancing..lol

the economics of third parties performing is not very strong using LL costs.

i hosted a 48 film festival at the sky cinema as well as a few other movie night events... they use the least amount of resourses.. no ones moving or dancing --- but sitting. and the movie is streamed in QT... etc. still its a tough one dealing with the tech issues and non control of the sims..

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

A SL music review blog would be a great thing. Maybe even a podcast that could include short samples (after all, commentary and criticism are standard examples of fair use)--but the contrast between this post and all the defenses of the plucky Random Resident gluing a few prims together and selling the resulting crap for a few Lindens as the triumph of SL is interesting.

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, there isn't any contrast, Melissa. Plucky amateurs are the stuff of Second Life.

But plucky amateurs gluing a few prims together and slapping a price tag on them are subjecting themselves to the open market, and the open market ignores or buys. If I want to put my little home-made product into the view, I have to pay for advertising on the classified lists or SLM.

The music thing is different. Here, I can simply book a slot by showing up, get out my tracks and my mike and my smoked-out lounge voice and 8 of my pals, and call it "live music in SL". The Events list is free advertising and visibility like I could never justify buying on Classifieds for my crappy little dingus.

To be sure, there are people who spam the events list with fake stuff that amounts in fact to rentals ads or hair ads. But the Lindens do weed those out pretty methodically. If I switch to the filter "Live Music," I get 100 people in the view who are advertising themselves in those slots. And until I TP and listen, I have no way of knowing how the market has assessed them.

We don't have free media in SL. Indeed, we have no media at all inworld to speak of, and that's why I call for more free media. Markets need free media. People need to be informed in markets. Plucky amateurs are great and we can celebrate them, but it's ok to have a free market and demand quality and get it.

A podcast is a good idea because it's essentially about something that is sound and if you can play some samples, all to the good.

[Laetizia Coronet]

That's a really good idea, an SL live music criticism blog. I'm too much out of the general SL timeframe here myself, and I am too much out of the current music scene to write with proper background knowlegde of trends and bands and all that. And anyway, I'm too damn lazy. But yes, great idea.
As for the first music I remember... that must be Mud. Early 70s teenybopperish Brit band that we used to playback to at home. My two older brothers and me. Like "Dynamite": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0eAMDtuTWg
Quite awful really :-)

[DiJodi Dubratt]

"If I switch to the filter "Live Music," I get 100 people in the view who are advertising themselves in those slots. And until I TP and listen, I have no way of knowing how the market has assessed them."

There is a way to get around this, and that is to get to know the live music venues, and which venue owners have musical tastes that resonate with yours and regularly book good musicians. The owners get to do the work of TP'ing around, listening and assessing, and you get to show up at the club and have a good chance of enjoying an hour of music with other appreciative music-lovers.

[Prokofy Neva]

DiJodi, I happen to have a good idea of that already from being in SL for nearly seven years.

But the newbie or even one-year-old is going to have a hard time sorting through the dross. When you land in a city and stay at a hotel, there are always little booklets on the desk in your room that tell you "What's Happening" in the music, theater, etc. scene. There is always the New Yorker with its listings, etc.

it's about making SL more like real life instead of some insular clique.

[Clausuriza]

Strong post Prok. Thank you.
I'd just add one obstacle as you pretty much cover it all.
I've met many musicians who barely know how easy it is to stream live. Even skilled producers.
This ain't related to the SL platform but in general.
Whatever makes sense to strengthen the music community would be nice.
A good live music blog, better ways to submit events based on genres, easier/cheaper ways to rent quad sims... more structured music presence at all gateways.
Wish I had more time.
Happy Trails is fantastic and every live musician should give "Who do you love" a spin! :D

[Saffia Widdershins]

I suppose you've checked this one out, Prok, but could your 'River' be Vltava by Bedřich Smetana? This is an ok (but not complete) recording: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwd51vB7Uow

My first music ... my big cousin playing "She Loves You" and dancing around the room to it with all her big frinds. I think the first LP I bought was Peter and the Wolf narrated by the incomparable Peter Ustinov. And my first single came later ... and that's awful because it's either Rolf Harris's Two Little Boys or the Osmonds' One Bad Apple. Then I had a crush on The New Seekers.

It's ok. You can all come back now.

I enjoy SL music,and I've organised a few concerts in my time. I would say that, while no-one is getting rich at this, the top-line acts can command a fee that would be roughly comparable with what a jobbing folk singer might make in an evening on the UK pub circuit.

There is - or used to be - an SL radio station that plays significant amounts of original SL music.

By the way, the drmmer from Mud used to date the girl who lived next door to me in my early teenage years. They were really nice guys, a bit stunned by success for their jolly, 50s-patische, rollicking pop: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2sMuVPMkkk

[Zappa Doodle Zimmerman]

Along with two other friends we did try to start a Second Life Music Blog. It was sadly a miserable experience for the reason you stated above,

"But here's the thing about live music in SL -- a lot of it is god-awful.

I mean -- really awful. Ouch ouch ouch."

We determined that we were going to call it like we saw (heard) it. If someone sucked we were going to say so. All three of us individually had 20 to 30 years RL experience in the music field. We would open events in search, randomly pick a name and go.

Personally it was rough for me to trash someone but I did it. In the event that one of us thought a performer sucked, another of us would go to give them a second hearing in order to be fair to them.

The end result was getting griefed both on the Blog (we allowed comments) and In World. We wound up taking the Blog down. It simply wasn't worth the pain.

There are some extremely talented performers in SL who do it for the love of music. But for every decent performer there are 20+ who suck. And how the hell they have fan bases is beyond me. The performers we trashed called on their fan bases to grief us. One in particular got banned for his behaviour.

We wanted to provide a service to both the residents and performers in SL but it was a harrowing experience.

I still go to a lot of Live Music events in SL. Some of the musicians I would pay to see in RL, they are that good. It just takes a little time to weed out who is worth seeing and who to avoid like the plague.

[Prokofy Neva]

Zappa, I don't ever recall seeing your music blog and it might have been a good read.

I admire your determination to go and "tell it like it is". Obviously, you proved the point that Second Life is for role-playing, and if you get in the way of someone role-playing a live musician, they will kill you, or their fans, who are also wedded to role-playing, will kill you.

So I wonder if it is possible to take another approach, and that is to only write about the middling and good and excellent bands, not the awful -- so if one out of twenty is good, you write about five.

Would that help some of them to get better? Well, they don't want or need to get better if they are role-playing, have no urgent need to make money, and have a dozen loyal friends who don't care if they can't carry a tune in a bucket.

Even if you focused just on the good ones, maybe it could work.

I was thinking of you did a "Best Bets" sort of publication and did not just music but other sim recommendations of art, exploring, history, etc. it might work.

Something that provided an alternative to Destinations in the viewer.

Of course, a lot of the Destinations are good. The Lindens have the staff time to pick out stuff, and they do usually pick out things that aren't crappy. Maybe it is Destinations that basically kills the ability for this blog or magazine to appear -- it's the usual state substitution of the private sector.

But the private sector never came up with it, it couldn't pay the staff for this labour-intensive job, and so the state won on this obviously because the state had an interest in serving newbies to try to get better retention.

Well, I am going to do my little part and try to update my InfoNUT which has been languishing for a few months. I used to try to get it out at least once or twice a month to have updated recommendations and I will add more live music.

Second Life amateurs have no self-awareness. They hate critics. They don't live at a meta-level. They don't appreciate irony. Believe me, I know a lot about this.

Even so, you should try to persist.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

It would be nice if people in SL were mature about criticism. But they are not. Especially if you criticize LL's crappy code. Here comes the aspberger army of sycophants to destroy your business.

If people were mature then they would understand only a zero stars rating is really bad and a 2 star rating was actually pretty good. A 3 star is worth celebrating. And only once in a while is something or someone so good they rate 4 stars.

But that is not how things are with the self entitled generation that was raised on trophies for poor work. Everyone thinks they rate 5 stars out of a possible 4.

The proposed blog doesn't have to have scathing ridicule reviews. Just a solid rating system that is clearly explained so people know 2 stars is not bad. And if a venue is really so bad that one might want to write a vitriol laced review? Why review it at all?

And yes a technical section would be great. The more the barriers are dropped the sooner new talent has a chance to shine.

[Zappa Doodle Zimmerman]

@Prokofy

In retrospect I wish we had done it that way, only reviewing the good. We spent a lot of time dealing with the Flak. It was against my better judgement at the time to post reviews about the bad but I deferred to my partners' opinions. Their feeling at the time was it would give us legitimacy. We had read what was being written by others and it was as you observed, so much hogwash.

Since that time, other things have had to take priority. As you know, blogging can be time consuming. I am not a prolific writer and I needed a lot of editorial help which my partners were quite adept at.

We would also include a brief review of the venue. Some of them are terribly designed for the purpose of Live Music. But that is a whole separate subject.

All in all it was an interesting experience for me. I simply haven't had the umption to do it again.

I will mention for the benefit of your readers some of whom i consider the best performers in SL, covering a wide gamut of genres:

Arman Finesmith, BigJim Allerhand, Noma Falta, Winters Kanto, Von Johim, Komuso Tokugama, JazzMan Correia, Danlange Diavalo, Joaquin Gustav, Coltrane Shostakovich, Al Velvetleaf, Harry Frychester, Ichie Kamichi, Leandro Doune, VladVoivode Diavalo, Blue4u Nowicka, Senjata Witt, just to name a few. All of them are accomplished musicians in their own rite. I could name others but this is a good sampling. I don't want to take over your blog with my list.

[Cinder Roxley]

it's not a music blog per se, but you can take a look at http://secondrater.com/ it could use more publicity, but you can submit reviews, i've just been looking at it this morning.

[Karenbarbara01]

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[Anek Fuchs]

the biggest single problem, is that sooo many folks are in fact living out a fantasy in sl, be it as a singer, or dj, or rockstar persona, and also the majority are karaoke style singers, i have for a long time tried to drive a wedge in for so many reasons, that would stop leveling all the talents as one and the same but instead would segregate them as they should have been during growth. I ended up being severely hated by some for these actions, when really I was trying to keep it from crumbling apart. i make it a firm rule to do a couple benefits a year and very few if any free shows, even getting paid for benefits most often. You said a crap ton of words up there at the start of and since on all this stuff, but the bottom line will always come down to a few things,...

firstly, who has the audacity to tell anyone in a fake place where folks make up their own rules, how to be one thing or another . .

secondly, put your money where your mouth is, be the critic, many have tried it actually if you know where to look, but in most cases, they are too chickenshit to say who they really are, so this way they can speak freely.

and third, be ready for the onslaught of a response that will tell you that you cant do it.

secondrater, is lightwieght compared to what needs to be done... many have tried to tlak about a coalition, or union as well and its all a sinking ship, until all of the artists agree, which is never likely . . or the fans have had enough crap.

here is one attempt,i think at what you suggest, but its out of date and way behind, and obviously the person just stopped.

http://tatsl.wordpress.com/

there are several others, one that has a grading system, a, b+ etcetera, others with a star rating system, but these blogs are like any other in sl, hot for the minute and then dead.

none of the artists want to have a pecking order, or submit that they are lesser and should make lesser than another, sl, simply is what it is, I have literally given up trying so hard to get this to become a more noticed issue.

all that being said, feel free to come to my show, and give a review, attend several, and ill throw out more variety than youve likely heard in sl, and dont stop there, there are so many, 30-40 artists nowadays that if you can catch the shows, are very good, pro level or at least very entertaining.

Anek Fuchs

[Prokofy Neva]

I think you nailed it, Anek -- people are in a fantasy RP mode, like on the Sims Online where we got to play the rock guitar -- and they don't want anybody puncturing their dream with criticism.

I think it's important to keep trying to use SL for real things anyway.