second life conference!

words can’t express the amazing time I had.

Here is the video instead

love KFH

Live music faces its challenges

One of the most interesting sessions I attended at the recent SLCC (Second Life Community Convention) in Chicago concerned the economic viability of music in Second Life. Because, it seems, for many participants, music in SL is in something of a crisis.

The basic challenge stems from the fact that SL is in many ways a microcosm of the world at large, at least in some respects. In the case of music, there are definite parallels. For example, one attendee from the UK – who runs the Dublin sim, that’s well worth a visit – pointed out that this week, the #3 album in the UK album charts sold under 2,500 copies – just a decade or so ago you would have seen sales for that slot of over four times that figure. Of course the way the charts are calculated includes some severe anomalies when it comes to counting on-line and download sales (where, for example, people may download individual tracks instead of a complete album – what does that score in the charts?), but it is undeniably true that music sales are down. Much of this is due to a publicly perceived apparent desire on the part of the record companies to rip off their customers… but that’s quite another topic and we won’t go into it here.

The outcome, however, is that there is an expectation on the part of many music consumers that music should be at least cheap, if not free – and in SL the latter is pretty much a given, at least at the level of the average club employing the average singer-songwriter or DJ. It may be possible to charge for an event with a major RL band playing live (or whatever) in SL, but in most cases where the artist is generally a singer-songwriter without much or any of a real-life track record, the audience expects to attend a venue for free. This means that the only money coming from the audience is paid via tip jars – either the venue’s or the musician’s. And tipping is falling off, so despite innovations like scripts for tip jars that split the income between venue and artist according to a preset ratio, there are costs on the venue and the musician’s sides of the equation that are simply not being met by the audience that attends.

The venue’s issues are the most obvious. A club owner has a range of expenses that have a fair degree of equivalence to those in the real world – and then some. There may be staff to pay, for example, such as hosts and security, and although that may not be a lot in real-world terms, it adds to a burden that becomes much more significant when you consider the major costs: land expenses (tier for example) and the cost of renting a stream.

And then you have to pay the artist – not only live musicians but DJs too. They also have an investment in hardware, software and other costs. They may be a musician in RL and cannot afford to play for nothing – unless they can justify it as promotion for their RL career or album/download sales. And while artists can attempt to sell downloads of their songs at SL gigs, this approach, according to a member of the band Keltish on the SLCC panel who set up a ‘downloads table’ in the same way as in RL you would sell CDs at the back of the room, is not at all popular with audiences, even at a small amount of money in real terms per song. He sold nothing at all.

The problem is that audiences expect music to be free, and as a result, each gig often costs a club owner several thousand $L more than the income it generates.

This situation is clearly unsustainable. If venues are not covering their costs, they will ultimately be forced to close, one way or another, or to try and make up the money by offering other features that may heavily impact the ambience of the venue (including, for example, not offering live music). Musicians, similarly, will no doubt (and should) resist ‘pay for play’ deals; they may also have trouble with the idea and expense of having to provide their own stream instead of one being provided by the venue (although this does, in fact, offer the musician some quantifiable benefits).

What, then, is the solution? Well, there are, potentially, several. One that was proposed was the idea of asking the Lindens to consider making it easier to run ticketed events. At present the standard technique is to set up a special group for the gig and charge a fee to join it. For the concert you ban access to the venue except for members of the group. Then afterwards you disband it. In practice this is messy and difficult to manage, particularly with quite a few residents running multiple alts (additional accounts/avatars) simply to circumvent the current 25-group maximum. One possibility might be to make it possible to create temporary groups beyond the 25 ‘permanent’ ones, that would disband themselves automatically at a specified time and date, ie after the gig.

But the trouble with ticketed events is that while they are no doubt practical on a large scale with well-known artists, possibly requiring full-sim or larger venues, this does not help the average club owner and the singer/songwriter on the club circuit in-world. Few if any of those artists would draw much of an audience if the event was tickets-only, especially if the process was as messy as it is now, and with public perception of the monetary value of live music being so low.

There were suggestions from the floor that included offering discounts to paying residents, but this hardly addresses the problem and neglects the fact that non-premium residents are still consumers of goods and services, so why a discount just because you’re a landowner? And how does that help a venue?

It seems to me that the solution to supporting the arts in general, and music in particular, in SL is, again, the same as it is in real life: sponsorship and, perhaps, subsidy. Corporate sponsorship makes a great deal of sense, especially with major corporations eager to target SL residents. In particular, I can see musical instrument industry companies as being potentially extremely interested in sponsoring SL concerts, multi-venue/multi-event festivals, and the like, with on-stage signage, banners and other advertising. There are also possibilities for product placement (an artist using a modelled Marshall amp on stage for example) and even the traditional artist endorsement approach where a company supports a particular musician in return for their prominent use, or public support in-world, of a company’s products.

Corporate sponsorship was mentioned in the discussion in Chicago: subsidy was only touched on. However it could be a viable approach. One suggestion was that on joining SL you could choose to agree that a certain amount of your money was to be donated to music in-world, rather as a US tax return allows you to earmark a donation to a political party. This could be a flat amount as suggested at the SLCC session, or perhaps, a percentage of your transactions for a stated period. Or Linden Labs could simply institute such a ‘tax’ themselves and charge everyone – but this would have problems too (apart from the fact that they are very much laissez-faire in their approach, preferring to leave things to residents where possible). It could further depress the average resident’s impression of the value of music in-world, because, they might argue, they have already paid for it. In addition there are several very thorny questions, like ‘why just music and/or the arts?’, how you would distribute this income, to whom and why.

Thus corporate sponsorship, coupled with easier group/ticketing strategies, seems to be the way to go so far… but no doubt there are many more ideas out there to consider. The SLCC panel only scratched the surface of what is an enormous issue. But the discussion is continuing via a ‘music development’ mailing list that is being set up specially for this topic. Residents can click here to subscribe.

Music in general, at the club level, and live music in particular, is an important part of Second Life. Many, if not most, of us like to go to a club, dance, meet new people, and have fun. We cannot allow this feature, central to many people’s Second Lives, to go into decline because audiences expect music at this level to be free.

It’s SLCC!

After great difficulty because of the weather, several of us are here in Chicago for the Second Life Community Convention 2007. That includes KFH, Jan and Lala… plus other friends I have yet to meet in person. More about it as the Convention progresses. Now… off to breakfast!