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Lexbot Sinister

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  1. That gets me even more confused about "scrobbling". Without it, what station and music is played gets obscured entirely. What if you go to my parcel, really like what you hear and try to find where it comes from? I would figure it's much easier to find the station & donate if it's actually clearly stated what is playing....
  2. Thank you for investigating this issue. As of a few nights ago, i also noticed the stream on our parcel vanishing. It is a great shame, since i haven't been able to find another stream with ambient sounding music as fitting as one of Somas stations, for our sci-fi themed build. I do kind of understand their reasoning, they get a lot of listeners and sit on the responsibility to pay royalties, while people stream their stations similarly to what one would do in a grocery store, restaurant or similar. At least here, that makes the store/restaurant/etc owner liable to pay a fee for playing radio in a public space. (license fee to STIM) The problem is that the SL viewer is more akin to the radio apparatus itself, than the apparatus owner and streamer. The person that enables the stream for public listening is the parcel owner. How would you then track who has paid a license fee, or not? If the parcel setting are set to entrance for group only, it could be debated that it is not a public, but a private space. A setting that can be changed in a second. The only way to squeeze some money out of all this, is to go to LL directly, but of course LL has nothing to do with what people stream on their parcels. The only thing they could do would be to monetize the ability to stream music at all (but isn't that already paid for, with the land rental fees?) and then split the dividends between the stations used. I don't really see that as a feasible route for LL to go. So in the process, SomaFM is cutting their donations off from any SL user, that is no longer able to stream the radio on their parcel. There is even no way to pay to stream. I guess they did the calculations and figured the streaming to SL costs them more than they get in return, and there is no debating that really, that they should supply us with music and then pay for it, too. But since there is no way to actually monetize it, i suppose that is the end of this story.
  3. I think the others are very politely telling you that a single random image won't sell in SL for more than the upload cost. So i'll say it bluntly. Unless the art image is something very spectacular or very unique (trees and landscapes are pretty abundant), it's going to be worth the upload cost, at most. Consider also your competition, there are hundreds of framed photos and other art for under 100 L$.
  4. LL is not being honest about the "fees" being just 10%, compared to other stores like turbosquid etc. Last time i checked, Turbosquid didn't have any additional fee's to exchange dollars into playtokens to buy items with, or require the merchant to exchange those tokens back, nor do they have any fee for processing credit. So saying that the fee for selling goods in SL is just 10%, is dishonest. I was trying to make a calculation for how much LL would get off a customer taking in 10 000 L$, using $40.25, but, i got stuck on the process credit as it's no longer possible to view or read about the charges unless you are verified Tilia account holder (and verify and give them your RL info). If you try to find the fees for process credit, you are sent to a knowledge article, that links you back to the page on your dashboard that linked you to the knowledgebase to begin with. How very transparent and all! So i'm not surprised that many will not even realize there is more fees.
  5. I was being sarcastic about Mollymews being new.... because anyone who shops clothes in SL (both from the marketplace and inworld) already knows that a mannequin is of no use other than shop decor to remind us of RL stores. Also, number of posts doesn't signify overall SL experience or who is more new than not... it just shows if you are chatty or not. Anyhow, age is not a competition, it just seemed to me like such a beginner idea, without knowing how clothes in SL work nowadays. Yes, SL used to have mannequins in some few stores, which were mostly a disguise to get people to camp for traffic. They did fill a small purpose of showing clothes off, since this was the time before demos had become commonplace. Hair already had demos, and skins as well, but prim and sculpted clothing didn't, as far as i can remember. Then came rigged mesh clothes, but, rigged only to bones and not adjusting to breast size or body fat etc etc. Needless to say, by then, it was IMPOSSIBLE to say if something would fit your shape, mannequin or not! So then came " standard sizing", on which merchants somewhat agreed what would be a size small, medium and large etc and now also clothing demos. Since then, no mannequins have been necessary or needed, other than store decor. And as it comes to store decor, there are more fun things to do with the store space than put up mannequins, maybe. It's true that we have "lost" a lot of things that would artificially bloat the traffic numbers, but i'm not too sure those should be missed. These were means to get your store more visible in search results, as traffic counted as a bonus to float your store up to the top of the search results. So the campers were paid to get your venue easier found and visible. This got of course abused to no end. Lucky chairs and group gifts still exist in no shortage.
  6. If your event is not "special" enough to spend 10L$ on, perhaps it's really.... not so much of an event.
  7. Hi and welcome to Second Life! Store mannequins have not been needed since the invention of rigged mesh and demos. There is zero need for a store mannequin to demo clothes for me, that i'm just a second later supposed to demo myself. The store mannequin doesn't have my AO, and i won't see if the rigging is acceptable or not. Also, considering how many clothes need alpha cuts to be activated on the mesh bodies, your bot would need to know how to use the different mesh bodies HUD's and alpha settings. But you know what store mannequins can increase? Customer complaints to the creator, after not demoing the clothes on their own avatar, and looking at the store mannequin instead. Item rezzers are great for items that are not supposed to be rigged and worn on your body.
  8. Hello, are you new in SL? Or just new to clothing? There is absolutely zero need for bots to "model" outfits, because if i'm in the store to shop, i pick up demos and model them on MYSELF, with the exact same ease as some store mannequin, except much, much better. Many stores also have their items mesh rezzed, so i can have a look at the textures and model without having to demo it first. But that's just clothing stores. There's plenty of other types of stores. Furniture and item stores usually have their items rezzed out. So what you are saying, is that you would like store owners to re-invent the wheel, just slightly less round. When looking for furniture, it's almost impossible to get a good idea from the marketplace anyways, since animations need to be tested, etc. Practically speaking, i don't need the stores to be any more "active" than they already are. It's already a lot to rez, and i might only be spending 5 minutes there anyways, realizing they don't have what i want to buy. If it takes me longer than 5 minutes to rez and find what i was looking for, i might be moving along anyways. There's nothing wrong with stores looking nice, but if i'm there to buy a couch, i want to buy a couch. Either way, LL is making sure they are getting their cut out of creators pockets, no matter what you do. Don't like to pay 10% for the marketplace? Fine, have an inworld shop then, pay for the land... Don't want to host your own store? Fine, sell on the marketplace...
  9. Since most of creators catering to that niche have quit or became inactive, the vanilla creators have taken over and started to fill in the gaps without any understanding of what this niche is about. There are a few left, that still make useful products, but they are quickly drowning among items without functionality. At the adult sales events, you will find things like bondage beds, without any bondage poses or bondage functionality. Toy racks, that don't give out any functional toys. Spanking horses, without a single spanking option, or even any bound pose. I can go on and on. At first glance, it looks like " This niche is catered to already" but that is as far from the truth as it could be. So in my perspective, it hasn't been a survival of the fittest, it has been a survival of the blandest of the bland, diluting anything of interest, as the bigger businesses stretch over niches where they don't belong, with their lack of understanding what the niche is about. In my experience, this goes also for lot of steampunk and sci fi. The larger stores, with a team of mesh creators can make a mesh to specifications, and it will look good. But people outside if a niche don't understand what is actually needed, and what specifications a product needs. And then when their items don't sell, because they entirely missed the point by miles, they go back to selling..... mainstream decor and bland clothes. So how many bdsm *-plugs does one need to choose from? Well, there are thousands..... but i haven't seen one with the actual animations and functionality of a *-plug since 2009.
  10. Wonderful advice! (/sarc) This is however exactly what merchants have been doing, and exactly what people will continue to do. The market of goods is starting to rapidly narrow down to very mainstream fashion and objects, since increased costs for conducting business pushes niche creators out. That in turn generates less interest to stick around, since the culture of SL is becoming increasingly bland. The whole idea of " don't like it, then quit, but don't whine" is making me sad, because that is exactly what is happening. People are quitting, we see it on the number of people logged in. The fewer people that log in, the less business opportunities for creators. So those quit too. Me personally, i much prefer if people get very vocal about how these changes affect them, and don't quit. As long as they don't quit, then there is still opportunity for positive changes. Maybe you haven't noticed, but those who quit, don't get replaced by new people coming to SL.
  11. Or, it could actually work like a normal subscription to a service, but what do i know. I still don't understand what people get out of defending this consumer-hostile practice. Does it benefit you to belittle people who figure they want to have what they are paying for?
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