Have you noticed the new SL "Destination Guide" ?

I think we all need to keep our eye on the changes and new content on the SL homepages.

A few days ago a Music Island audience member came to me to say that she'd tried to point a new resident in the direction of my Music Island concert series, telling her that it could be found under the Showcase tab in "Music Venues".... but... it wasn't there! She'd looked on the web and discovered that there was a new "Destination Guide" replacing showcase and that "classical" had ceased to exist as a genre so Music Island had ceased to exist as well apparently. (And yet we are still hosting concerts weekly).

I finally got around to wrestling with this yesterday morning. Indeed at that time there wasn't a single category in "Music" that I could put our series in. "Indie/Alternative" was perhaps the closest among the choices which ranged from Club/Bar, to Rock, to Blues/Jazz, Country... and so on. All the sub-sets of popular, social music were there.

With some difficulty I found a link to a submission form for a "new" listing (for a series operating since 2007) and started to fill it in. First problem, I needed a photo with specific dimensions hosted on Flickr only. (I use Picassa). Damn... searching on my old computer for an old Flickr account user-name. Edit a photo to exact specs and upload, figure out how to get the URL for the photo in a changed Flickr interface. Next problem.... the field with "genre".... I leave it blank. Write my summary and comments. Hit submit. Submission fails. I try again picking Indie/Alternative and sending along comments about how this was just to get the bleeping submission form to load. Submission fails. I have now spent two hours trying to solve this. I do more searches on the SL site and in the wiki I find a link to an email address to send to if the Destination Guide submission form borks up on you. I pile all my information in an email ... with assorted bitching attached... and fire it off.

Later in the day I tell this story at an inworld meeting and someone searches on Music Island and surprisingly finds it on the Destination Guide. It was in fact the submission I had made earlier in the day (miracle of miracles) but it was slotted with 18 assorted others in a new "genre" category called "Live Music Spots". Hmmmm. I think a number of the rock, country, etc. venues also hold "live events" so this is confusing and a "live music spot" is not a "genre". Since Music Island is on page 3 of the category, I'm sure that we weren't the first ones to say... "hey where are we supposed to fit in this guide?" I was left wondering why in this age where "everything is miscellaneous" we weren't seeing a system based on tagging with the resultant folksonomy rather than trying to create a classification system which will always be limited by the knowledge and worldview of the classifier.... as demonstrated by his/her ignoring of classical music in SL.

Although this might seem like a somewhat happy ending to the story, no one at the meeting using the old viewer or a TPV could access all of the information on the Destination Guide intuitively. Clicking the old "Showcase" tab on search brought up a link to the new Destination Guide but only showed them up only the first few categories on the guide.

Just in case you thought "search" was getting better.

This is not a deathly blow to the Music Island series because I have built up an inworld group of 1575 members and a maillist of 900 more. Most people come to concerts through group notices or at the invitation of a group member. I also post on a few other related groups where appropriate. However, I initially built the group from people finding the venue listing in events or showcase and checking us out. I don't know how many times people have said to me that it took them weeks/months to find Music Island and once there they connected to other events, groups and individuals who led them to an enriched cultural life in SL, that in fact their attendance had been a major turning point in their participation and retention in SL. For the most part these are well-educated and affluent consumers with a lot to offer the virtual world.

So let's make it difficult for them to find the cultural activities they crave?

p.s. Since writing this post I have heard from someone else not happy with another classification of their favorite spot.

Fourth of July Weekend Concert

Bring your July 4 in with a bang!
Cindy Ecksol, American folk song
July 3 @ 6 pm SLT
Fireworks by RacerX Gullwing to follow

SL's grand wizard of Kaboom, RacerX Gullwing will president over the incendiary conclusion to this evening's concert, following our favorite lady of the American heartland, Cindy Ecksol.

June 5, 6 and 7 on Music Island

A varied program coming up on Saturday, Sunday and Monday in Second Life from experimental to traditional to world music. Whether you like staying with what you know and love or have an adventurous spirit and love expanding your listening palette, you'll find something to enjoy this week.

SATURDAY JUNE 5 @ 11 AM SLT
Enniv Zarf, pianist/composer
The MUSE-IC BOX CONCERT

Bring out your poems! Bring out your poems! Enniv will be inspired by your favorites this Saturday. Whether it is a classic poem you've always loved or your own work, send it to Kate Miranda for inclusion in the MUSE-IC box. Enniv will be drawing notecards out of the box to find inspiration for piano improvisation in the notecards you provide. Send your notecards to Kate Miranda inworld or to katemir@gmail.com by email by 5 pm SLT Friday June 4.

SUNDAY JUNE 6 @ 1:30 PM SLT
Izabela Jaworower, violin

The lovely Izabela joins us for a violin recital of all of your favorites and a few you have not heard yet in SL.

MONDAY JUNE 7 @ 12 PM (noon) SLT
Atheene Dodonpa, soprano
Songs from the gypsy campfire

The lovely Atheene Dodonpa is an early music specialist who has brought us wonderful programs in the past such as her memorable musical tour of a Crusader encampment, medieval songs, and a program focusing on the prolific compositions of Abbess Hildegarde von Bingen.

In this program Atheene will turn her attention to the people of the Wagon, Europes Gypsies. Their origins are steeped in myth and mystery and their music has inspired many great classical composers. Now hear the original songs and learn about their history.

Is music the "killer app" for Second Life?

Towards the end of my recent appearance on the Metanomics, host Jennette Forager suggested that Linden Lab's CEO had remarked that music could well be the "killer app" for Second Life. Unfortunately this comment and other questions about the economics of music, the "business of music" came too near the end of the session to be fully addressed.

The subject has been very much on my mind of late because I (along with other selected music venue/series hosts) had been asked to meet with Pete Linden, Catherine Linden, and some representatives of an independent marketing firm that the Lindens have hired to market Second Life. At the top of the agenda of that meeting was determining what positive stories we had to tell of music in Second Life and also what we might be willing to share in news stories or online formats.

Coincidentally in the same week I had been talking to RL arts colleagues about an arts marketing initiative of the Canadian government called "Culture Days" in which we are being requested to host some sort of public event to promote arts awareness in our communities. My colleagues' response was "So they want us to work for nothing for a day for some publicity scheme? No thanks!"

An SL musician invited to a private meeting with the Lindens on their marketing plans shared with me that--while he loves performing in SL--this invitation to help market sounds like another case of asking artists to work for nothing and he'll be declining if that's the case.

What is lacking in both RL and SL with all these seemingly great ideas from marketers is how the artists will get paid for the use of their time and talents. There is often a profound misunderstanding of how business is conducted in the arts, the extent to which artists desire particular types of promotion and the restrictions that may be in place preventing the use of particular artists or artistic products for promotional purposes.

Almost every year in my RL orchestra management positions someone from marketing or a Board member would suggest, "hey let's take the orchestra to the mall and do a radio remote as a subscription drive!" I would then hand them a spreadsheet of the costs to rehearse and transport the musicians and gear, pay musician union wages (with broadcast fee) and tell them how many subscriptions we would need to sell in order to cover the costs (usually more than seats in the house, and always more than was reasonable to expect in a two hour program). Only with corporate or foundation support for 50% or more of the costs of the performance, did this become a viable marketing initiative for the orchestra. Oddly enough almost everything you do in the arts boils down to about that 50/50 ratio of income and public support.

What is the public benefit of music in RL and SL? Can you imagine SL without clubs and dancing, the excitement of live music? It is a big part of the "stuff to do" in SL and what keeps people coming in, establishing accounts and wanting to buy land and doll up their avatar. Why dress up when you have nowhere to go to dance, to see and be seen?

In the US, the arts generates $166 B annually in economic activity. Cultural activities do more to bring tourists into cities than major league sports and the people attending cultural activities stay longer and spend more than sports enthusiasts. The economic spinoffs of the arts benefit everyone in the community in indirect ways. More gas sold at the pumps, less crime on streets filled with people coming from arts events, more restaurant jobs, more hotel jobs, more work for printers and marketers, employed musicians and artists in the community who contribute financially and artistically. A healthy arts sector is a key indicator of a healthy city. It pays corporations, communities and foundations to invest in the arts to enable arts organizations to close the gap between what they can sell artistic products for and what it takes to produce those products. Arts organizations give back financial rewards to communities in excess of the support they need to keep them afloat.

The Second Life business community similarly is benefiting from our Second Life artists but is doing little so far to assist in making our music venues, galleries, theatres and dance companies run on a stable financial footing. I realize that business community has its own challenges. I do welcome Pete Linden's factfinding mission on SL music but I think that the stories he is looking for--financial successes for musicians founded in SL music ventures--will be rare.

People often remark about the success Music Island has in routinely having capacity audiences for our performances. What they don't realize is the amount of work that has gone into that over the past couple of years and continues to go into it on a weekly basis. My average time commitment to the Music Island series is two work days a week. While that figure usually astonishes people, when I break down the tasks it seems difficult to imagine how it doesn't take more (and it sometimes does) 1. Reaching and booking artists 2. Getting program, bios, details for posting 3. Creating notecards for the event 4. Creating poster art for the event. 5. posting events on Google calendar, Music Island site, blogging, twittering, SL events listings. 5. Inworld group announcements 6. Group invitations and maillist invitations 7. Configuring inworld mailer device and sending mailer messages, 7 soundchecks and teaching new musicians to stream 8. Meeting with musicians and/or colleagues about projects, festivals, special events. 9 updating lightbox, notegivers 10. hosting concerts themselves 11. doing inworld and rl presentations on music in Second Life. If I were paid my usual salary for this work I would be expecting about $20,000. (pro-rated on my usual fulltime earnings as an arts manager). This has been my personal donation to the Second Life community at a time when I knew that there was not an economic model in place to actually pay for this work, but the work was needed in order to demonstrate what music could do in SL, artistically and as a social and economic catalyst. In the same spirit artists have been donating thousands of dollars worth of their time and talents in performance.

It is a great first step that Linden Lab employees are starting to realize the role that music plays in Second Life. However it would be naive of them to believe that the music community can continue forever on volunteer efforts and funded from personal pocketbooks alone. Music Island is a house of cards with three cards leaning on each other. 1) the donation of artists performances at rates that would cause AF of M representatives to have conniptions 2) the donation of my time as administrator/publicist 3) the donation of the venue space with the only cost my residency tier contribution. These contributions make my costs for running Music Island a total of about $60 per month, and we normally receive about that in $L contributions. The real monthly costs for running Music Island would about $3000 per month approximately equally divided between artistic fees, administrative costs and facility costs.

A $36,000 barebones annual budget for an arts project of the international scope of Music Island should not be cost-prohibitive but what is needed is the political will and awareness of individuals at the top decision-making levels of Linden Lab that we in the arts need help in making our case and connecting to a new type of arts funder. Most arts funders support local, regional and national arts initiatives because of the promotion of quality of life and preservation of national cultural treasures. As an experienced grant writer I can't build a case for funding arts in Second Life to any of the traditional funding sources I apply to annually for RL based arts projects in the Toronto area. If Linden Labs is to continue to benefit from the "killer app" of music in SL, rather than see venue owners and series promoters give up as their resources dry up, we are going to have to make a case together to the international business and arts community about the fit between the marketing of arts internationally and the promotion of the 3D platform as a healthy community for education, business and social networking.

Miriam Forsythe, piano May 23 @ 12 pm SLT

"Old Friends and New Friends"
May 23 @ 12 pm SLT (PDT)
Music Island, Sea Turtle Island

PROGRAM:

* Arrangements of Pentecost Sunday hymn tunes: "Spirit, I Have Heard You Calling" and "Come, O Spirit" (EBENEZER)
* Frederic Chopin - Ballade no. 3
* Erno von Dohnanyi - Postludium from Winterreigen, op. 13
* J. Russel Robinson - Sapho Rag
* Ludwig van Beethoven - Grande Sonate Pathetique, op. 13
* George Frideric Handel - Air and Variations from Suite no. 1
* Amy Beach - Scottish Legend
* Lincoln Antonio - O Pianista Invisivel (The Invisible Pianist)
* Sergei Rachmaninoff - Prelude no. 11 from Op. 32

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Miriam Forsythe is a classical pianist who performs a range of music from Bach to new music. Her style is full of emotion and energy. As a dance accompanist in real life, she has a special love for music with exciting rhythms, and gives each piece its own personality.

Miriam Forsythe (Heather W. Reichgott) is a preacher, scholar of theology, pianist, and composer. She studied piano throughout childhood and adolescence, participating in many recitals and competitions both as a pianist and as a composer. After discerning a call to ministry she pursued degrees in religion. Meanwhile, she continued to study piano for two years with Prof. Peter Takacs at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and worked as an accompanist. She presently works as a ballet accompanist at Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and Amherst Ballet School (where some of her compositions have been featured in performances).