Music restriction in skyboxes

[Jillam]

I understand the distance restriction for music in Skyboxes but I cant go more than a few meters when the radio cuts out or dims the music. Its not a bandwith problem. I have high speed. Why cant the distance be extended some?

[Jadeclaw Denfu]

Set the stream in the 'About Land'-Dialogue in the Audio or Sound tab.

That works everywhere on your parcel.

 

[Thinkerer Melville]

If you go into an adjacent parcel, the music will change to the music stream set for the parcel you entered.  If no stream is set  there the music you were hearing from the parcel you left will die out

TKR

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Many skyboxes actually share the land that supports them with many other skyboxes.  They are just stacked far enough apart so you can't see or hear anyone or the sky box itself.  This is particularly true of 'economy' type rentals. 

If this is the case, you have no media rights and can't set your stream through the land tools because everyone would hear it that shares the land.  To get around this landlords are using shared media , aka media on a prim.  This type of streaming comes through the server the same way ambient sound does.  You can play it anywhere in SL and don't even need land.  Just the ability to rez it or attach it to your screen.  Sound that comes into SL this way is very much effected by the distance you are from the prim that plays the music, which probably in your case is a shared media TV/Radio.

There is nothing you can do to stop this from happening short of renting a home on a piece of land where you are the only tenant and you are given media rights.  These are a lot more expensive to rent.  In the situation you are in now, all the renters on your parcel in all the skyboxes pay a small amount that adds up to the tier plus profit for the landlord.  When you rent where you are the only tenant, you will be paying enough to cover th eentire tier plus profit on your own. 

For instance a 4096 parcel can have five skyboxes on it with each tenant having 100 prims for personal use and the skybox using 97.  The rent could then be say 350 a week.  If you rented a 4096 where you were the only tenant, you would pay closer to 1700L a week.  Of course you get all the prims and the ability to change the land media as well as most of the time having control over who can access the parcel too.  Its just a matter of what is worth more to you.  Privacy and control of the land, or your L's.

[Qie Niangao]

I think it's correct that in this case the landlord is using "shared media" (a.k.a., Media on a Prim, or MoaP) -- that would explain the perception that distance "dims the music" (as opposed to the music cross-fading from one stream to another, which is the behavior of Parcel Audio and Media).

If this is one of the vertically stacked rentals, using Shared Media is okay for what it is, but it's not a real substitute for parcel audio/media. Unfortunately, there's nothing to be done about the parcel audio stream (a.k.a., "music stream", "land radio") -- it is indeed shared by all who are on the parcel. The parcel media stream, however, can be different for each avatar on the parcel (using PARCEL_MEDIA_COMMAND_AGENT), and it's easy enough for a script to push the same stream to everybody in one volume of space, and a different stream to those in another space, all on the same parcel. Parcel media can be used for music streams (as well as video streams, hosted media files, web pages, etc), and they will play at constant volume across the entire space.