Economics and reason

There are at least a few dozen theories on how the music scene should evolve in Second Life. Most of these theories are based on wishful thinking. There are also some well-established paradigms that really don’t work. I contend nobody is an expert regardless of what they might tell you. Allow me to make a few observations, and then offer a conclusion based on those observations. While I may be wrong in my conclusions I think you will find the observations valid.

Venues close due to economic shortfall.

I’ve seen it time and time again. Great venues that support artist just vanish. The venue operators can simply not afford the overhead to stay open.

Venues can break even or perhaps turn a profit.

I know of two venues I play at that are covering overhead and turning a small profit. Both of these venues feature artist that play for tips only, and only feature quality music. Footnote, they both use the extra money to tip musicians.

Venue operators pay for the music scene in Second Life.

People want to listen to live music, and musicians want to present live music. Without venues the two parties could not get together.

Music management types do much harm and no good at all.

I’m sure some slimy schemer demanded the first fee from some struggling venue owner; confident the Second Life music scene was about to explode. There are a few kind-hearted people trying to help out a friend and I commend them for their assistance. But the management organizations suck rancid sweaty moose ass. Their main job is to fill everybody’s heads with all kind of wild ideas based on… wishful thinking.

Some musicians need to have more realistic expectations.

You won’t get rich and famous playing in second life. You are deluded if you think in the current state of development you can make a living playing in second life.

Fees kill venues.

There are some venues that have a budget and this budget included money for fees. However, in over 550 shows, I’ve never seen venue tips equal even the most meager fee. When an artist plays for “Tips only” every L$ in the venue tip jar goes towards covering the cost of operation. Even if it’s only L$ 1, that is still a sum towards overhead.

Listeners need to be more altruistic

I see a couple of guys that have been to at least a dozen of my shows and never tip me. They don’t tip the venue either. They hang out, chat it up and leave when the show is over. In the real world, entertainment cost money. You really should tips something, each according to their ability seems fair enough. If you live in your Mom’s basement, don’t have a job and Mom won’t give you money for no dang computer game… then a kind word goes a long way.

Show some support to the people that work so hard to entertain you.

And the most important observation of all… Love is the fuel that runs the big Music scene engine.

People that run venues LOVE music, the musicians LOVE playing music and the many wonderful supporters of both Musicians and venues LOVE being involved with the scene they’ve created.

While this is a wonderful thing, it does have a dark side. Love sometimes creates unrealistic expectations.

Some venue owners figure when the music scene EXPLODES, they’ll be right in the middle of it… moving and shaking

Some musicians quit their day job and try to eek out a living streaming their music.

Some listeners decided they know what they are doing, love music, and want to start a record company, or management agency.

There are my observations, so what are my conclusions.

We operate in a donation-based economy. People assign worth to music and venues and donate as they see fit.

Demanding a fee for performance is not fair, considering that fee only generates debt for the venue operator.

Quality should be a major concern for musicians and venue operators alike. People find more worth in something good then something that sucks. If a musician has a consistent quality show, and venues book quality acts, both can expect to thrive in a donation based economy.

Not every act that plays for “Tips only” is worth booking. When a venue gets a reputation as an OPEN MIC scene, real music fans avoid it. Open mic crowds come to support friends and tip their friend very well, but seem to ignore the needs of the venue. They are not very interested in improving the situation for live music.

Some seem to feel their needs to be a huge sophisticated infrastructure in place in order for the music scene to grow. A good, or bad example of this is Trax music resource center. Quite a set up they have there and I’m sure they are full of good intentions… but it doesn’t do shit. The most salient point toward growth is an influx of great music and efficiently operated venues. As it stands now you are more likely to see a horrible act then a good one.

In a more perfect world, the music management types would be publicly ostracized, but in our less then perfect world they should be simply ignored. They are a cancer on the music scene.

And the most profound conclusion…

When the music comes first a lot of things are going to fall into place. Love the music, listen to the music, and support the music. Embrace the passion, get lost in the moment. But don’t get swept up in magical thinking.

When established quality brands, both as musicians and venues arise, this will be the major inroad to a greater impact on the general public.

Is it live or is it Memorex?

I’m probably dating myself using that reference, but odds are… you remember that question as well.

What I want to talk about today is the value of actual live music verses somebody singing over recorded backing tracks.

If you go into a bar and somebody is singing over recorded back up tracks it’s called “Karaoke night”, and the real fun of that, is anybody can get up and make and ass of themselves. The entertainment value of Karaoke has nothing at all to do with good music. Even if somebody has a fooking amazing voice, they are devaluated by the forum they are operating in.

Another place where pre-recorded backs up tracks are prevalent is church. Christian’s lub to sing about Jesus with the full glory behind them. It’s cheap and cheesy, and perfectly okay when somebody that doesn’t have a lot of talent, but has a good heart, wants to bless the congregation with the gift of song.

Close your eyes and nod Timmy it will be over soon.

I’ve thought about it quite a while now and I’ve come to the conclusion the reason pre-recorded back of up tracks are the keystone of musical banality is because the tracks were never recorded to be the musical bed for a horrible singer. They were recorded by professional musicians to be sung over by a professional singer, with the vocals compressed and Eq’ed, and composited to perfection.

When uncle Bob plugs the CD player in to a line level mixer and run the radio shack “Realistic” mic into the cheesy 40$ spring reverb unit he got at Mr. Reeds garage sale, dutifully patching his voice into the mixer with LOT O’ VERB, and starts to sing “Butterfly kisses”… perhaps things can go awry.

Karaoke is the audio equivalent of having a beautiful airbrush painting rife with detail and taking a crap right in the middle of it. Trust me, people notice the turd. The only real difference being the turd would not have TOO MUCH REVERB.

Now let talk about the doctrine of appropriate technology developed by the Peach Corp.

A while back, some brilliant hippy figured out if you give some third world villager a state of the art John Deer tractor, you are not really going to improve his crop yield. He’s probably using a stick pulled by a mule to plow his field and may have never seen machine more complex then a water pump. The maintenance of a tractor would overwhelm him and he would probably just go back to the stick and mule system he’s comfortable with.

But… if you gave him an iron plow, he would understand it’s use and it would be a vast improvement over the old school stick. Progress is achieved and people gets to eat.

This is why live music works so well. The voice and instrument are coming from a real audio space. It’s an iron plow you can stick in your ear. It blends easily together because it is quality consistent.

Does that mean it’s a turd on a turd?

No… because it is quality consistent. This means there is not huge gap between the quality of the music and voice. While it may not sound… in theory, as good as a studio recording, the listener scales and filters what they hear. If the performance is of reasonable quality, and the emotional content is intact, it can be far more compelling then any recorded performance.

Am I suggesting all Karaoke performers quit performing in Second Life?

Well I could suggest that, but I doubt they would do it. However, a more reasonable solution would be for them to either learn to play an instrument, or find an accompanist. An advantage of finding an accompanist would be most musicians would not want to play with somebody that sucks.

If you talk Bill Ray down the street into coming to your house and picking a few toons on his geetar while you sang… and he smashes his geetar and runs from the room jabbing frantically at his ears with an ice pick, you might not be as good a singer as you think you are.

That being said… let’s address the Guitar-aroke types.

If you are the Guitar God you think you are, start a freaking band. I find musicians love to play with other great musician and most do it will little hope for compensation.

For music to make a deeper impact on the general public in Second Life, it has to be good and it has to be live.

Is it live or is it Memorex? Everybody can tell.

Zorch-cast vol 1

Zorch cast

I just figured it out

For the longest time a common Second Life phrase has had me quite stumped. That phrase being…“Real Life musician”.

I think I understand what they are implying, however, the meaning is far different then the implication.

They are trying to say, “I am not a Second Life musician”, or perhaps, “I’m not JUST a Second Life musician”.

Second life is full of simulations. Simulated houses, simulated Motorcycles, simulated romance, and when you boil is all down… the simulation is only as profound as the person experiencing its need for the simulation.

Say you want to own a big house on a private island. That is your “Dream house”. If you create an approximation of that dream house in Second Life, while still technically a dream house, some need is met.

Some would say this is quite sad, but I don’t agree. If your approximation cost 1% of the real thing, and gives you 10% of the enjoyment, what is the harm? Life is grim, fun matters and expending time and energy to make life a little more enjoyable is probably better then walking around suffering.

When I hear a new musician is takes me less then one song to figure out how “Real Life” they are. Seems to me the ones that feel the greatest need to underscore their “Real Life Creds” are the ones that aren’t even technically musicians to begin with.

Have you ever noticed how many BIG NAME musicians in Second Life play primarily at night? The odd fact of the matter is if they were “Real Life” musicians, it seems to me they would be plying their trade in the “Real World” at night.

Of course this moment of clarity doesn’t really affect much at all unless I look at my own musical adventure. Maybe I need to go out and find some real people that can hurl real tomatoes at me if I suck.

Hummmmm…..

I’m I a simulated Rockstar?

The Music is real regardless of the environment.

Independence = Cha-ching!!!!

A fellow blog writer made an entry today about the loneliness of independence. It really got me thinking. Not about what they were writing about (the wonder of a minuscule attention span), but rather about independence as a working musician.

In Second Life independence and the lack of an actual music business give the clever musician a plethora of opportunities the real world lacks.

That being said, the worse thing that could happen to musicians in general is if some kind of music “BUSINESS” managed to actually appear in Second life.

Yes there are schemers, but thank goodness they never really stumbled across an effective way to exploit musicians. If they did, in a very large part the game would be over.

In the so-called real world, the music business on all levels exist to support the growth of the music business. Bar owners hire musicians to sell beer, record companies sign band to generate product. The bottom line, you favorite rock star may have millions of dollars but in order to achieve that, they first had to generate billions of dollars for the music industry.

As long as there is a recording industry, the great emancipator didn’t free all the slaves.

Now I am in no way suggesting you can get rich, or even make anything close to a decent living from your second life earnings.

But…

Things can be quite profitable for you. Speaking for myself, my entire overhead as an operating businessman (kind of creepy when you put it that way) is covered by my earnings in second life.

My earnings in Second Life cover my web site, stream, and any incidental promotional expenses. This may seem like a small thing, but in fact operating capital is a large deal of the leverage used by the music business in the real world. In Second Life, I basically own the store.

This ownership gives me a lot of “Wiggle room”. I’m underwriting my own musical adventure and because of that I can afford to be as wise or reckless as I desire. Either mode of operation can prove to be profitable or disastrous. Nobody really has a grip on what the mechanics of success are yet.

This “Wiggle room” allows me to experiment.

Somebody told me playing too many shows would be a “Very bad thing™”. It would diminish my draw and make myself less attractive to fee paying venues. But I don’t seek fees, and every show I play seems to be well attended (unless I play at night).

Somebody told me releasing too many collections would effectively cause me to be “Competing with myself”. So far that is not the case. Old collections sell as well as the new collections and every now and then somebody runs the board and buys them all at once.

I also remember when somebody told me I was too arrogant to be a vital part of the Second Life Music Scene. Yet I seem to have an affect even thought I’ve been banished.

The bottom line is, the adults are away, and we can be as crazy as we want to be. With any luck we’ll make a few dollars, but far more important then that, perhaps we’ll achieve some powerful emotional gestalt with music.

To sum it up

Music vs. Product… Music

Rich and famous vs. in control and content… in control and content.

Independence vs. servitude… Independence = Cha-ching

Explaining the Paradox

The other day I was discussing plans for a music distribution network for original musicians in Second Life with a friend of mine. She remarked I was a delightful paradox and I didn’t think much of it at the time.

But now I am thinking about it. What did she mean? Did she find it paradoxical I could be so willing to incline a cynical eye towards the elaborate schemes of other, and still pony up the chutzpah to propose my own grand vision?

Perhaps she did, perhaps she did not. But if anyone finds that somewhat paradoxical, allow me to tell you the difference between the random dreamers of Second Life and myself.

I’m simply proposing what works for me will work for others. If I can sell hundreds of MP3s a month, why can’t other quality original music artist? I don’t see any reason why I should be the exception to the rule. And I’m inclined to think those music lovers need to be basically trained to buy MP3s. It’s currently not part of the program for most music aficionados.

Now I’m going to speculate on what it is I’m doing right. While I might be wrong on what I’m doing right… I must be doing something right because in the first three months of 2009 I’ve averaged over one gigabyte of downloads each month.

Quality. I write good songs and seem to be able to create recordings with decent production values. I also seem to be able to make these recordings in a reasonable (read profitable) amount of time. I’ve heard one artist mention it takes him 100 hours to make a finished recording of a single song. Perhaps he was trying to impress on people how professional he is, but I don’t think I have 100 hours invested in any collection I’ve released.

Promotion. I put new songs in heavy rotation in my shows. People come to know and love the new material and when they see it listed in the new collection they are quite interested in buying it. Example, one of my supporters really loves the song “Howard Roark and me”, she even asked for the lyrics before the song was released as part of a collection. The day of the release party, she was there while I was setting up to be first in line to purchase the collection with her favorite song in it.

Events. Each collection has a release party. While I’ve throttled back the pre-release hysteria the last time out, it didn’t affect sales at all. Everybody that looks at my performance schedule sees the upcoming release party date and time. They are all well aware that something new is coming, and they do show up to buy the collection the day it’s released.

Cross promotion. While new collections sell the most, every month I sell old collections as well. The more people hear, the more they seem to want to hear. Each collection sells other collections. I’ve had very profitable days where someone runs the board and buys all the collections.

Preview. Odd terminology actually, but the fact each collection is available on my web site to listen to in it’s entirety allows people to make and informed opinion about their potential purchase. One of the nice things about administrating my own web site is I get the stats, I know what pages people are looking at and how much time they are spending there. 23 visitors spent one hour or more viewing the site. What do you think they were doing? I think they were listening to music.

Collections. I seem to be the only guy catching on to this, but reasonably priced collections sell better then the “songs ala carte system” so popular on the interweb today. I’ve tried selling single song and found it a lot of bother to administer, and it seemed to be too much of a bother for the consumer as well. Once I ditched the singles altogether things started to move. The simple fact is people are interested in Zorch as an artist and in most cases don’t want just the “HIT SONG”. They go to concert after concert and have come to realize I have a strong catalog and they want as much of it as they can get.

Price point. L$ 100 per song is a good deal less then what I-tunes charges for a download. Some might think I’m short changing myself, but I don’t see it that way at all. Each sale nets me a small sum of money, but the money is not what has real value. The real value is getting my music in the hands (and ears) of listeners. This promotes my live show (more money), sell more collections (more money) and creates interest in further releases (in time… more money).

But it’s not really about the money primarily it’s about the music.

But, no kidding, money matters. I’ve been a musicians all of my adult life, and I’ve spent most of that time trying to figure out a better way to work my craft and make a living.

Currently, I make a daily amount of money equivalent to working in a bar band with out the overhead or major effort required. Unlike a bar band I work more days per-week (seven days a week if you are counting), so I’m already doing better then if I pitched in with some goobers doing Garth Brooks covers.

As a matter of full disclosure, I play one fee paying show per-week, and I’ve offered to play that show for tips only, but the owner insist on paying me. All other monies are made via tips.

But I do sell MP3 collections. The monies made from that would probably come close to covering any shortfall due to lack of fees.

Is the music scene in Second Life about to blow up? I don’t think so. But there are sufficient numbers of interested people to support this musician dreams. I do think there is room for growth. Not BLOW UP type growth. But I can see things becoming more profitable for me.

One of the things that would make things even more profitable for me is the growth of the original music community as a whole. If more people were in the habit of buying MP3s, there would be more people buying mine.

Before you pass me off as some money grubbing bastard, I feel I should point out I work very hard. I play lots of shows, write lots of songs and release a collection every season.

But then… if you are doing something you love you never work a day in your life.

Marketing principals for musicians 101

If you never went for your MBA, you knowledge of business is very limited. If you do have your MBA, you knowledge of music marketing would still be kind of sketchy. Today I’m going to try and give you a primer on how to get a little attention. The following axioms seem to work even as the paradigm of selling music changes.

A marketing campaign is a lot of work.

The word campaign is it’s more common usage refers to a series of battle in a war. A marketing campaign is not much different. There are those that say, “work smarter, not harder”, but the sad fact of the matter is you have to work both smart and hard. Campaigning operates on a three-stage drill. Plan, execute, and adjust.

Plan: figure out your goal and devise a method to achieve it.
Execute: employ the methodology of your plan.
Adjust: figure out what went right, what went wrong and where you are now. Even a smashing success that achieves your goal leaves you with an adjustment. That being where do you go from here. One battle won; there are more to fight.

Perception is reality.

In marketing, this is the golden rule… or at least one of them. Whatever product or act you have, you wish to instill in your marketing target a perception. In music that perception would be, “This music is worth you attention”. In Second Life people see a glib, personable, poet, rock star named Zorch. In reality I’m just a guy with a guitar singing some songs I wrote. But reality is not what marketing is about, it’s about perception.

WARNING. Do not claim to be a Rock Star and expect people to accept it as so. You often see goober claiming to have 1,000 members in their group, or claiming to be Billboard magazine’s most promising new talent of 2008. This can only prove to backfire because people will be predisposed to think it’s a lie (and in all likelihood it is), and be exceptionally critical of your performance. What you want to do is give them the clues you are something special and let them draw their own conclusions.

People need to hear things three times before it sticks.

Get your name in front of people as often as possible, In theory it only takes three times to be remembered, but more never hurts. This leads to a “Rule of Thumb”. In music if more people have heard of you then have actually heard you, then you marketing is working.

This is one of the reason I insist venues post my shows in “Live Music Events”. Even if people don’t come to the show, they will see the name. I play at least two shows a day at this point. If every venue owner list me that is 60 views of my name per-month. Sooner or later, people tend to come check it out.

The Six “P” principal.

Learn it, Live it, and all will be well with you. The Six “P”s are, Proper preparation prevents pitiful poor performance. Every show should be the best it can be, always bring you “A” game. I know that is a tall order and we all have off days, but the more prepared you are the better you’ll do.

Dare to be different.

You have to stick out to get attention. I know of one guy that wears women’s clothing. He is a crossdressing (male avatar in female clothing) musician. His act is pretty lame but he gets attention. If you act isn’t lame… do something different to get attention.

WARNING. Don’t be a furry. Even if you are into that crap, it just makes you look retarded. As people watch your show they’ll be thinking “Fucking furry”, and not listen to a note you play.

Actually the best thing you can do to be different is something musically different. But that is a lot more work then slapping on a frock and some bunny ears.

WARING PART 2. Don’t stand in crowds. There are tons of place that feature musicians advert boards. Click on them get some info. I don’t recommend you do this because you take on the drab patina of all the other losers that imagine themselves to be musicians.


Once again this is just a primer, not intended to be a book. So good campaigning to all you talented souls. And if you aren’t talented, do the opposite of everything outlined in this entry.

Theory vs. Practice

Probably the biggest impediment to growth in the Second Life music scene is its fascination with theory.

In theory, we are all one big happy musical family. In practice we aren’t.

In theory, venue operators make a return on their investment. In practice they don’t.

In theory, MP3 should sell. In most cases they do not.

In theory the music scene is about to blow up “BIG TIME ™”. In practice it might blow up, but not in a good way.

There is some fantasy that the next MEGA event will turn the corner, when in practice, it just caters to those already interested in the Second Life music scene.

Let’s talk about what has transpired and really get a perspective of what the big picture might actually be.

The big happy family? If this were in anyway true, my Un-career would be over. I’ve pissed off a few that entertain the fantasy they are lynchpins in the Second life music pantheon, and still manage to play more gigs then is healthy for me.

In practice, the music scene is both fragmented, and quite contentious. When I was banished from the music scene by one faction, it only caused me to be embraced by another faction.

Is this a bad thing? Hell no. Imagine how fucking boring things would be if an artist had to appease the centralized tastemakers. Everyone would sound like “The Popular kids” and there would be no room for actual artist.

Venues turning a profit? Not commonly viable in the current state of affairs. First off, artist demanding a fee do significant harm to venues seeking to break even. I suspect the lions share of good venues operate simply because they enjoy music and want to be involved with it. God bless them they volunteer to pay the freight for the whole music scene.

MP3 sale for Second Life artist? Most do not do well at all. I’ve heard on fellow boast he sold 23 MP3s that month. That month I hosted 550 MP3 downloads.

Now I feel I should comment, I feel that MP3 sales make a better economic bedrock for the original artist then the reliance of fees or even tips. The day I released “Shades of Blue” I made 100 $ US in one show. The vast majority of that money was from MP3 sales.

What am I doing right? Why do MP3 sales work for me?

Well part of it is the quality of my music. People like it, they want to own it.

Frequency of releases. I put out a collection every season. I can do this because I’m prolific, and most cannot.

I play original music 99.99% of the time. Every show is promotion for “My music”. People attending my shows are interested for the most part in “My music”.

What are other artist doing wrong?

Reliance on third party vendors. There are Virtual CDs that some are promoting, that revolve around keeping the transaction “In World”. This is a huge error in my estimation. The less your distribution interacts with the Second Life client the better.

Playing covers. Many artists are under the impression they must play covers to work. You will probably get a bigger audience faster playing covers then original music. BUT… you become just another lounge singer. You big audience will tolerate your originals, but they are really waiting patiently for you to crank up another cover. They are there for entertainment; you are more like a jukebox then an artist.

Lack of good songs. I’ve seen some songwriters that have one or two good songs and a bunch of piffle they have also written. Bigger quality catalogs sell more MP3s.

And finally…

The music scene in Second Life is about to blow up? There are a lot of people devoted to believing this. But they fail to take into account the fact that Second life over all is a very small thing on a planet with billions of people on it, and in the tiny world of Second Life, music is more of a footnote then a major factor.

To illustrate this, allow me to suggest more people know what “Xcite” refers to then know any of the names on the LAME music award nominee list.

Some will pout and say, “Hey Von jon got a record deal from playing on Second Life”. Yeah and now Von jon is a household name. Oh wait… he’s not. He is a phenomenal blues player and scored a record deal with an “Indie” company. He’s a niche artist that got signed to a niche label.

I get a handful of recording contract offered to me each year. Most are scams trying to make a few bucks off my talent or gullibility.

The biggest impediment to the Second Life music explosion is the fact it’s not ready to go BOOM just yet. The music for the most part is hit or miss. Maybe I should say hit, or miss, miss, miss, miss. Few involved with “Moving and Shaking” understand even the most fundamental principals of marketing. It is no wonder things linger in the imagination end of the success pool.

However, I do see glimmers of life. Something that might someday make an impact. These are pockets of organically grown communities that are growing in sophistication every day.

The major hamstring to the whole shebang is people in general have gone from thinking in the box to thinking in the coffin. Stuff that doesn’t work is used over and over again, with the unshakable belief that someday it will pay off.

When communities committed to good music finally manifest themselves, I’m inclined to think we will be prepared to make more profound inroads to the general population of the tiny world of Second Life.

When the music scene is more about music and less about fees, return on investment, and hijacking authority to establish orthodoxy, perhaps we will make some progress.

Dreaming vs. Magical Dreaming

I received an offer to be involved with some kind of interview based radio show the other day (not real radio, but the internet kind of radio). Now I’m not mentioning names of parties involved simply because I don’t have any personal issues with these people. But I don’t agree with their point of view about music/music economy in Second Life. I feel I should point out a lot of people share the point of view I find objectionable, and the only reason I object to it is because it’s based on Magical Dreaming.

The personality behind the interview show sent me a long notecard about his or her thoughts on a musical career in Second life. His or Her basic thrust was how can a professional original music artist make a living in Second life when venue owner pay such small fees?

Her or she then went on to catalog the many virtues of original music, and then whined about how much musical gear cost to buy.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. When is the last time you saw a ridding beggar?

The elephant in the room is the fact it cost money to run a venue in Second life. The vast majority of venues run at a loss every month. Venues close all the time because the operators simply can’t afford the overhead. When a musician puts his or her hand out for a fee, they only add to the monthly overhead, metaphorically punching a hole in a boat that is already taking on water.

Now there was a time I was becoming comfortable with accepting a fee to pay. The primary reason behind that was so many people were telling me that was how it worked. But when I pause to consider venues operate on a donation-based economy, I find it unconscionable to request a fee.

If I charge a venue owner 1,000 L$ to play an hour, they would have to collect at least 1,000 L$ in tips to cover my fee, and the odds of a venue collecting 1,000 L$ in tips in the course of an hour show is pretty unlikely. So the fee becomes part of the growing debt of running a venue in Second life.

I know I’ve talked about this before, but I feel quite passionate about this and I’m more then willing to give the drum a few more whacks in effort to make my point.

Should a musician expect to make a living off his or her efforts in Second Life? Well if they are doing so expecting fees… basically a patronage system to pay their bills, they should be prepared to be disappointed.

In the real life music business, musicians could make millions of dollars, but only do so after generating billions of dollars for the music industry. Musicians only generate debt in Second Life.

I’m not against dreaming, because everything that is was once a dream.

I don’t expect my Un-career in Second Life music to pay my bills. I do make money, and when I sit and do the math, it’s pretty comparable to what I would make playing in a bar band three sets a night. The major difference being, I play more shows then any bar band I know of per-week, so that is a lump sum gain.

I also get to play an all-original show, and not have to deal with the personalities that make up a band.

I get to sell MP3s and make actual money on that too. I sell over 200 MP3s a month and every dime of the sales ends up in my pocket. I don’t need I-tunes or any third party brokering the sales for me.

I’m also free of the restraints of management or any other industry type. I’m operating about as independently as I can.

I view venues and the people that operate them as empowering agents that allow me to present something of value to the listener. I play the music I love; the listener enjoys the music and rewards me with tips. They also choose to purchase my MP3 collections because they see them as something of value worth owning.

The way I operate seems to be economically sound, reasonable, and best of all it works. While I am part of an organic community, that seems to grow in sophistication every day, I’m not in any way linked to some all encompassing Second Life music community. So my success is not based on the success of that imaginary beast.

I dream and then I work hard to manifest those dreams. On the other hand, to expect people to patently underwrite your career in music is childish magical thinking. I suspect the people the whine the most about how cheap venue operators are, are probably the one with the least to offer musically. If they were pulling good crowds and making good tips the lack of a hand out from the venue operator would not affect them so drastically.