SLMC

Silas Scarborough · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 1635 Location: None

It's not quite the same thing as ads on a radio station don't generate any lindens for the performer. So long as there is agreement to that effect, there's no problem but that agreement doesn't exist and that's where things got sticky. I wasn't referring to anyone specifically and we'd be better off discussing it in concept rather than with regard to any individual.

Unless someone is running a radio station as a hobby, the ads will be required. In my view, they're harmless as all of it promotes SL to an external listener. However, the ads can be hugely destructive if they're regarded as more than they are. For example, if you agree to run an ad for a business once a month for $1000L, you'll need a LOT of ads before you've got anything that will divvy down to anything meaningful in performer payback and still provide enough to support the station.

You all are going to love this but it seems to me that the funds should come from the artist as that is the individual who will benefit from it through distribution of his/her work to a wider audience. That's what payola was all about.
_________________
Silas Scarborough
Silas World Tour Blog
Find a place to play and I'll roll the P.A. anywhere
If you want to play, bring yer guitar

EvaMoon · Joined: 30 Nov 2007 Posts: 748

You may not be referring to someone specific but I was responding to Cher.

If a radio station sells ads, I don't expect to see any part of that as a performer on the playlist. If the radio station is operating as a music retailer as well, I expect to see income from that. I also expect that I will have to pay for the benefit of distribution to a wider audience. That's what the percentage is all about.

I don't know what the deal is that Cher is upset about and I'm trying to understand it. If Fox is selling mp3's and keeping all the income, that's definitely wrong. I haven't seen any indication that he's selling mp3's at all. The buy links all go directly to the artist's sites. If he WERE to sell mp3's directly through the station, I would expect to have an agreement on terms. I do NOT think it's evil for people besides the original artist to make some money on the deal.
_________________
EvaMoon Ember in SL

Eva Moon & the Lunatics
Musical mischief after dark
http://evamoon.net
Calendar: http://evamoon.net/sl
http://www.thesixtyone.com/evamoon

Lunatalk Blog: http://evamoon.net/blog

Silas Scarborough · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 1635 Location: None

The deal is over what was known when the tunes were submitted and what is known now. There was no mention of advertising revenue when the songs were uploaded so the possibility of income, whether one decides to pursue it or not, was never factored into anyone's decision to upload.

There are varying degrees of emotion regarding the evolution into ad-supported stations but this looks like the reverse of what usually happens here. Usually people talk too much on any given subject but in this case the problem was that people didn't talk enough. Fox should have been more forthcoming but I don't think he's guilty of anything more than clumsiness as he tries to figure out how to drive a sustainable system.

I still maintain the strongest move is to focus on what should be done with radio stations from now on rather than what mistakes have been made to this point. Quite apart from anything else, they're not radio stations. Usually they're playlist repeaters and, to my knowledge, there's no intro to any song so it's not likely anyone will know whose song is playing unless they've heard it somewhere else already. It would be a tremendous expense for Fox, Cher, Circe, or any of the public service SL music stations to provide the intros so push it out a little more.

Who's doing it already? Yep, there are live DJs from one end of SL to the other. Now if SL jammers were to buddy up with these DJs then maybe some symbiosis could happen. DJs know something that the SL music stations never got: if you're going to draw a crowd then your music must be focused. For example, maybe I could cut a deal with Natasha Lekrone, the Metal Goddess, to get a few of my tracks into her DJ show. A more extreme example would be if you talked a DJ into doing a feature show one night in which you provide the material and the DJ provides the insightful blab. Who pays whom in this example will be interesting.

I'm not suggesting abandoning the SL music stations but I do suggest some tuning on their part. If a station is operating from a random playlist then it should be possible for one of Cylindrian's tunes to come up and be immediately followed by mine. That wouldn't make any sense anywhere outside of an apparently drug-addled White House. Really it comes to focus: what exactly is the SL music station trying to do?
_________________
Silas Scarborough
Silas World Tour Blog
Find a place to play and I'll roll the P.A. anywhere
If you want to play, bring yer guitar

Fox_Reinsch · Joined: 06 Mar 2008 Posts: 35 Location: Connecticut

I think having to defend what I am doing is pathetic, so maybe we can turn this around and be constructive.

My big question is how do we promote live music in SL? Is a SL radio station even a viable option?

Originally I got the idea to start ISR while helping Kori Travanti promote herself in SL. It was so much work for her to do a concert, only to have 50 people show up at the venue. In RL radio stations are the prime vehicle to promote music so I thought why not a SL radio station, so I started IndieSpectrum last November.

Since SL has about 50K logins I thought it would be easy to get 1% of them to listen to music that was from SL not RL.........WAS I WRONG!

I see that Cher's "tactics" don't seem to be working for her station with only 3-5 listeners reported on her Shoutcast server when I have checked often during prime time.

My thought was people in SL would like listening to SL musicians and most people getting their first place didn't know how to set the stream on their land so I would make it easy to play my stream by giving away radios.

I thought if I made them look cool and also had them scripted to announce live events people would gobble them up and put them in their homes. What I didn't realize was it isn't easy to give away free radios. It has proven impossible for me to get hardly anyone with a sim to put my free music player vendor out. I thought all the musicians who I played would help to but turns out half my musician friends forget to put out their tip jar much less my music player vendor.

I have given away hundreds of them on SLeXchange but can't seem to get many store owners to put out my vendors. Even though I hate the idea of commercials on my station I decided to make it a cross promotion deal with any store, mall or music venue that if they put out my vendors and/or played my stream I would go to the effort of giving them not only banner ads on my web page but also spoken ads on the stream. I even got a crazy friend of mine to try and help but apparently all she did was get Cher to think "my promoter" was using strong arm tactics.

I still believe if I could find a way to get my free full copy transfer vendors at high traffic, non music related businesses I could draw people in SL into the live music scene. Any ideas?

As far as making money that is out of the question until I have 500 listeners and 20,000 people a month visiting the web page. In my dreams.

Originally before starting ISR I spoke with several musicians about selling their music for them on a web page and they unanimously thought it was a great idea because I would only need a 5 or 10% commission unlike iTune's and Amazon's 50 - 60% commission. The work involved in setting that up is mind boggling and I wouldn't even consider it unless I had huge numbers. Are there any musicians that wouldn't like me to sell 100 song downloads a month for them at 99 cents if I took a dime and all they had to do is give me permission???

Do you think wanting to be "listener supported", which I think is much cooler than running pay commercials, is so bad? Turns out that isn't going to work untill I have big numbers either, so far not one $L!

Lately I decided to start hosting concerts at the IndieSpectrum studio waterfront. Maybe I will get some venue tips but mostly I hope the musicians get the tips.

BTW if you really want to see what I am up to visit http://www.indiespecturm.com everything is there in full color and not only that but you can tune in my stream and listen to some great original music from SL artists.

Oh one other thing: Cher I would love to put a banner ad and link to SLive if you would do the same on your web page.

****Music makes SL a better place*****

Hope to hear lots of positive suggestions!

Fox

Ursula Cinquetti · Joined: 25 Oct 2007 Posts: 19

Silas Scarborough · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 1635 Location: None

Fox_Reinsch · Joined: 06 Mar 2008 Posts: 35 Location: Connecticut

Hey Silas, I am looking for help here, I don't have the answers..........

How do we promote live music outside the music community?

Should we make radios that play all the SL music stations?

As a group should we get Linden Labs to help us?

I see you sell your music on iTunes and CD baby wouldn't you like it if a SL radio station could make you a real $100 a month at only a 5 or 10% commision?

Should I be putting ads somewhere or putting camping chairs out.

I don't know what works, I am trying everything. How about some suggestions.

Fox

Cher Harrington · Joined: 13 Sep 2007 Posts: 309

There are many threads in this forum with you asking the same thing, over and over again.

RayW · Joined: 05 Sep 2007 Posts: 953 Location: Twin Cities, MN

You know ... just as a thought ... when I travel around SL, I do NOT have my media on ... mainly because I usually don't typically like other people's choice of music (at least, in the past) ... and I'm now in the habbit of leaving it off unless I'm "home" and want to listen to my own choice in music.

So, you could be playing any SL radio in all the malls in SL and I would NOT be listening.

I hate signs. But, I might put up signs in my mall and art colony indicating that SL radio is playing there, so "Turn your radio ON". In fact, that might be good for the art colony, since there are 5 parcels and I could play different stations on each parcel.
_________________
Ray
http://www.rayweyland.com
http://www.sounds-of-ray.com

Silas Scarborough · Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Posts: 1635 Location: None

I'm not going to get into the cowboys and indians aspect of this. I don't know who the good/bad guys are and, frankly, it's not important to me. What is important to me is that we need to get past it.

One thing I know for sure is that one-off individual solutions are not going to work. We've tried that. Cher has been at it for years, as has Circe, and Fox is relatively new to it. Some progress has been made but no-one is enjoying fame and fortune as a result of it.

As Ray said, many people aren't even listening to radio. Why, because they don't like the content. My suggestion on this still stands as I run Slow Radio at the Ballroom because I know it will present a consistent stream of treacle-sweet romantic stuff. I have no idea what I'll get if I tune in an SL music station but I'm pretty sure it won't be that. If it's just a flow of SL performers, there won't be any focus at all.

Maybe I'm all wet but I don't think you can solve the problem unless you're clear on what it is. This question also still stands: what specifically are you trying to accomplish with these radio stations?
_________________
Silas Scarborough
Silas World Tour Blog
Find a place to play and I'll roll the P.A. anywhere
If you want to play, bring yer guitar