Help Grace Help the Lindens Improve Live Music in SL

Live music innovator Grace McDunnough is spearheading an effort to improve Second Life's live music scene, by collecting and presenting user surveys and opinion to the Lindens at SLCC next week. That includes a priority ranking section, so you can decide what's more important: improving group chat, expanding group size, or -- this one's a very good idea -- allowing SL musicians to sell tickets and song downloads on the xStreetSL ecommerce site.

If you perform live music or just enjoy it in-world, this is an important (and fairly short) survey: go here to take it.

Comments

[radar]

I liked Crap Mariner's efforts, thought they went a long way towards raising awareness of musicians in SL. How come the Lindens couldn't do something similar in terms of making people who consume music aware of who is in SL and how to get their stuff?

http://riaa.isfullofcrap.com/

[Princess Ivory]

Thanks for letting us all know about this. I submitted a survey, emailed the link to my SL friends, and will post a link on my blog as well. I'd tweet it too, but Twitter is down at the moment. :(

Live performance in SL is a wonderful experience; I am able to hear all kinds of music and experience dance and theater performances, etc., that I would not normally have the same degree of access to in TAW (the actual world, aka RL).

[Ciaran Laval]

Why can't musicians sell tickets on Xstreet now? I purchased a ticket on Xstreet for a live event last weekend, it wasn't a music event, it was a talk but if they can sell tickets for events like that on Xstreet I can see no reason why musicians can't.

[Troy McConaghy]

@Ciaran: Many musicians have tried selling tickets to their live music events, but the usual result is not great: a low turnout unless it's a truly rare and unique event. People will just go to a free event going on at the same time.

It's not too hard to create a scripted attachment which, when worn, gives the wearer access to a venue --- Rezzable did that but it clearly didn't make them reams of money. One could sell the scripted attachment on XStreet SL today. Linden Lab doesn't need to do anything to enable such devices.

One can specify a cover charge to enter an event - you have to buy a pass to enter the land parcel. I've never actually seen an event that did that. I'm not even sure I'd know how to buy a parcel pass. Maybe you right-click the land?

The Foundation for Rich Content had a Box Office scripting contest years ago. There were several entries. They were systems to sell tickets to grant access to an area for a limited amount of time (and to send others home). It never really got used much.

Basically, SL Residents have come to expect most SL events to be free (except for conferences, which usually have a registration fee, not a ticket price). It's a cultural thing.

SL musicians do make money from things like tip jars, sales of their music on iTunes, sales of recordings of live shows (sold inworld), and sales of merchandise.

Linden Lab could certainly help with promotion of music in SL, but they're busy people and have lots of other things to do. Most of the good SL musicians are also great self-promoters.