On SL Music
It’s not often I find myself compelled to harness all my “writing skills” to spill out some words almost against my will but I got an IM in Second Life last night during a show that I really felt needed an answer and I’d like to share that answer ‘cos I think it needs to be discussed and the solution seems kinda obvious to me. Someone claiming to be a student studying the legal side of artists, DJs, etc in virtual worlds, asked me what I thought being such a flagrant lawless. It’s an issue - and I’m sure the following will convey this - I’ve spent some time in the past 6 months thinking about. This is what I sent. They had IMed my main avatar Melody too hence the opening line.
hi, I’m sorry I didn’t get to reply to this yesterday. These are mine and Melody’s thoughts on this: we would *love* to comply with the industry and it would be a lot more fun if it was all 100% legal, but I’ve looked into this and there simply is no license agreement offered by them that covers our situation and income (which is pretty much non-existent and that’s true I would guess for more than half of SL performers and almost 100% of venues). The “immense numbers of potential viewers” you mentioned is nonsense in Second Life, the limits of which are well-documented. The *best* sims can accomodate at the most 100 avatars, and most performers/venues will only use a 50-user stream because even that quantity of punters is rare to find at a show. I would say in my 6 months of performing I have averaged 15 people per show and that’s an optimistic estimate. We use the stream less than 10 hours per week and, as I said, what we make from it has never more than covered Second Life fees.
On a side note, one of the ways I have always “justified” the questionable legal side of things is: people are at these shows in Second Life because they want live music. They kinda don’t care what they hear most of the time as long as it’s live. They weren’t going to buy that song you sang if they didn’t come and hear you sing it. Ironically, however, just the other week, I had somebody IM me after a show, asking me what was the Fiona Apple song I sang. She then proceeded to buy it from iTunes. So if anything you could argue that it’s *promoting* the artists. I’ve never claimed anybody else’s work as my own. I realise that a license fee should be paid, but until somebody either creates a license that makes sense or simply asks us to stop, I really don’t see this as an issue. This is before even considering the shady area of suggesting that these relatively small SL gatherings could almost be classed as private parties. I’m pretty sure you’ll hear the same from most SL music people.
I’ve discussed it with a couple of people since responding and it has only become clearer to me having put together the above statement. This is, in my opinion, the industry’s only option: I sell my own music online and via a company called CDBaby I get all kinds of revenue levels. The minimum streaming amount I see is in the order of 1/10th of a cent per play. I’m fine with this. If you apply this figure to my figures above, 20 songs per show, 15 listeners, 10 hours a week, it comes to about $12 a month which I would be happy to pay. The only solution I have seen so far on the publishing companies’ sites that suggests is might cover the SL situation is a blanket type license running into the $thousands, and you’d need more than one if you wanted to play artists from differing publishers. The music industry keeps complaining that they’re losing money, but they’re losing even more by not claiming what they could claim. I’m almost positive about this: people will pay if they can afford it. Sorry about another soap-boxy post but this stuff really gets me mad.
