How does paying to see an act improve the fan’s experience – or (WIFM –what’s in it for me?)? If I don’t want to pay a flat fee to enter the venue, can’t I just wait an hour or so and see my favorite artist play at a non- pay venue? Unless artists are planning on regulating their shows and carefully planning their pay-to-play venue appearances on days when they don’t have ‘free’ shows, I really can’t see the win for the artist.

Is the venue promising to ‘increase my listening enjoyment’? and if so, how? Less lag? Lag has become a given in SL – just like rain in Seattle. With most artists providing their own premium stream, the venue doesn’t need to be involved in this. Less ‘tip beggin’ by hosts/esses? Most seasoned fans don’t let that bother them.

Will the artist be able to attract new fans if the fans won’t pay the entrance fee to begin with? Thusly the necessity to continue to play venues that do not require the entrance fee. I’m sure that in crunching the numbers, there’s a ‘minimum ticket sale’ that has been set whereby the venue and the musician break even or come out ahead. How many artists are there in SL who can pull that kind of crowd?

Finally, new artists are entering SL every day. I can only assume that most of them come in order to expand their audience and expose their talent in an ever growing medium. There will always be a need for venues where they can play for tips only or a nominal fee as they draw larger and larger fan bases. We will still need venue owners who ‘do it just for the passion/hobby’ – let’s hope they don’t get dismayed.

I am all about musicians and venues finding a win-win. My husband is a full-time musician in RL. That said – we do music for a living; we just don’t make a living at it. You can’t pay your electric bill with the free beer you get paid for playing a club. And similarly, SL venue owners and musicians can’t pay for their tier and streams without the ‘Linden love extended by the fan’.

As a long-time lover and supporter of Live Music (both in world and out), I can’t imagine SL without live musicians. While I have no answers, I know enough about the SL music community to know that between the musicians, venue owners AND the fans, the solution is just around the corner.

I am one of those musicians as well, a professional level player within this virtual realm we all love and share. I joined april 25th or so of last year, and in six months, made a decent amount of money for that six months, before thiings started to slow down.
I had meetings, discussed with venue owners, and artists alike, how best to move forward in this direction, many meetings, and a cover charge idea, was the main topic, so i began plans to implement it, and when i slurled it, and hit my groups with the info, nobody showed, it was a tragic smack or realization for me, and then MK did it just weeks later, and made a success of it.
I chose a bad day, lol as well as not having the amount of popularity MK has, and it is well deserved, he is a great musical force in SL.
I have been at the front line of this, as much as I could, even at the risk of my own SL career, and I will be as involved as I can be, to try and help both sides.
It seems every time this conversation happens, someone pipes in and says ” this has been done and it goes nowhere” . . . well, stop saying that, and participate, help find a positive result, because thats how things get done.
I have seen many issues in this virtual realm, from venue owners, and artists alike, and despite the fact that the mention of the word union, or unification, and the fear that seems to cloud up peoples minds when you use those words, it really is going to take some kind of collective to make all this work.

I have been there from the beginning of the SL music scene as a live performer, using it as a action research experiment in personal branding and new business model experimentation for this emerging performance medium.

re: Casino’s and Malls. Thet were only a small part of the venue scene, and in fact were the worst places to perform at due to lag, spam, and bad design. The best thing to happen to live music was the death of the from the performance scene, and it was no great hit as a performer to see them go.

re:”BLAME THE ARTISTS->Is it a source of exposure and an avenue to sell CD’s? or is it an alternative Performance Platform to rival RL and as such generate a living?”

You seem to know little of the actual state of RL music and recording industry or how it works. Then again, most musicians don’t understand it either so you are in good company. Suffice to say that neither of these are viable forms of sustainable revenue in RL. -> http://getzorched.blogspot.com/2009/09/slaves-vs-freemen.html

You get closer to one of the core issues at the end: the Unrealistic Expectations placed on an emerging technology platform and the user base. However, it is inaccurate to apply it to one set of players only.

The Unrealistic Expectations are on the part of all players in this virtual music game: Artists, venues, promoters, etc.

I could tell you some stories.
One day I might.

It started when a few musicians realised the potential of exposing their talent to a larger global audience, like MySpace in many respects, but in a way that generated interactive feedback. Venues on the other hand were forming clubs, as part of the malls, to attract traffic. Back then it generated an subsidy from LL and was the best way to get noticed in search etc. It was a win win situation in that the artists had no need to pay tier fees, had a ready made audience and venues, whilst the Venue in turn attracted more traffic, and hence more mall rentals or product sales to cover tier costs.

Profits were actually good enough for the venues to pay a token fee for the artists. More artists were attracted to the concept of gaining global exposure and, at the same time, earn a little SL spending money. Before long a sliding fee scale had entered the picture, with the more established artists able to ask higher fees.

Then Along came the casino Boom.
Venues with casinos were rolling in cash and happily paid more and more. We also had LL actively encouraging Corporate Sponsorship and the likes of IBM, Coke, and Playboy were happy to pay RL rates for Live artists. Before long some artists could actually make a living in SL, and several still do.

But the Bubble burst, casinos were banned only a few malls or product vendors could afford to keep the music going. Then along came SLX and its clones. More and more SL shopping was happening on web sites, less people were renting Mall space, SL changed the search listing criteria and made Traffic less important and the Traffic subsidy system was, of course, long gone. Finally SL bought out SLX, advertised it on the Secondlife.com pages, the search listings and within the client, suddenly everyone was shopping in SLX and not going to malls. Any Club dependent on Mall income began to fold and many who survive have joined the ranks of the few clubs that existed purely to promote live music as a hobby, not as an income source.

We are now in a situation that the sources of Income have dried up, the artists are still expecting to be paid (in some cases more than a living wage for many of the countries represented in SL) and the general public are still under the impression that artists play for free and that if you own a venue you are rolling in cash. Add to that the fact that many artists now own there own venues (and argue that they too have tier to pay, but that is their choice) they have created a conflict of interest. They now compete with the very venues that have supported them and paid them. Whilst if they perform at their own venues they do not have to pay artist fees, get to keep both venue and artist tips, and often have guest artists perform, generally for tips only, on a kind of barter system of mutual support.

If there is a crisis in SL music, it was largely created by the artists. The solution to the problem is not inventing new sources of income, but revisiting the very reason that SL Live music exists. Is it a source of exposure and an avenue to sell CD’s? or is it an alternative Performance Platform to rival RL and as such generate a living?

Each Musician will have to answer that for themselves. But if they truly want to help the Venues, as they claim in these discussions, then they should reduce their fees, in line with the real state of the SL economy, Share the tips with the Venues, and Stop Competing with those who they claim to be helping.

As to your estimate, in the case of my duo, you’re pretty correct. Our hourly rate falls within that range.

You said the very same thing I said in my own blog earlier today: the real problem is that live music is so de-valued that eventually more and more musicians decide it’s not worth the hassle and hang it up. My partner and I are at that very crossroads right now.

This model has been floated over and over. It doesn’t work. My hat is off to anyone who wants to give it a shot, but the reasoning behind thinking that you’re going to force people to pay for your own vanity projects is pretty close to the top of the “not getting it” list.

Can you PLEASE change the the colors of this website? The white text on black background is bugging my eyes outta me HEAD!!!!!!

Love ya man!

M