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.