Alazarin Mondrian

Speaking as a musician performer, I've long since got used to the fact that most of the people who attend my shows don't tip. It's just not worth getting bent out of shape over it. Sure, it's nice to get some L$ for playing as it helps pay for the audio stream and maybe some new outfits for my band, but I prefer to concentrate on playing rather than hustle my audience for 'Linden Love'.

Lights a candle for Ebbe's family.

Why, yes. I totally agree that our SL avatars should be a wholly authentic representation of our RL selves. As you know, I am a transgenderfluid draconic from the star system you know as Eta Carinae and have been resident on your planet doing field research for the past two centuries. :D

I turned off voice on my land because I use my place as a venue for my live streamed music shows that go out on YouTube, Facebook, Periscope and Twitch. I got fed up with random griefers using voice to spam my place with noise during a show. Same with avatar sounds as well as making it safe / no-damage. Similarly I made it so all the avatars in the live band are locked in place as a way of putting an end to idiots who found it funny to push musicians' avatars off stage.

I'm not sure if it's related to the Cloud migration, but lately I've noticed that textures [including the bump and shiny textures] tend to load and then unload. You can watch as the lower-rez versions [64 X 64 or 128 X 128] take over while the full-sized ones [512 X 512 or 1024 X 1024] go awol. It's weird and a bit disconcerting to watch.

Interesting to see that Vanity Bonetto is taking a positive look on this change of ownership of Second Life. At 220 regions she does have a sizable investment in Second Life. I wonder what Anshe Chung's take on this is... she is the largest landowner is Second Life that I know of and has a massive stake in SL's future.

Yay me 😉

Yikes!!! Did you sell the ownership of the pieces in question to the publishing company or license them to publish your work? If you made the mistake of selling them ownership of your work, then they have every right to sue you. I know, it sounds crazy, but that's how it works. If you simply licensed your works to the publishing company, they were just being opportunistic. If you are based in the UK, I strongly recommend that you contact the Musicians' Union and the PRS

As an example of the legal position of performers [DJ's musicians, etc...] requiring licences to perform copyright works, I can offer my story: I've been performing my own compositions for over 12 years in SL. About 3 years ago, I decided to start live streaming my shows onto YouTube and then Facebook. Shortly afterwards, I added a few cover versions to my live set to spice things up a bit. Then along came GDPR and Article 13. Suddenly I found myself slapped with an endless stream of copyright claims against my live stream videos that had been applied retroactively against me for unlicensed use of various cover versions as well as my own material! I was able to get around most of the copyright claims by either removing the offending tracks from my livestream videos or just deleting the videos. Led Zeppelin's publishers not only blocked the live stream videos that contained my cover version of the Immigrant Song, but made it impossible for me to delete the videos! All over 1/1000th of a penny of revenue! That's what happens when bots [based on the Shazam software] are deployed in a big way by publishing and record companies As for my own material, my distribution company was too lazy to even check that I was playing my own material on the internet so I had to provide them with a list off all my pieces they had lodged copyright claims against... wasting my time and Google's time. Grrr.... What I'm getting around to is that copyright enforcement is a real thing. From my experience, if your performance is a simple 'shout into the void' and is not recorded / archived in any way, then you'll probably be OK. As soon as your live stream is archived, your live stream will be parsed by a Shazam bot and copyright claims will be filed against you. Seriously, it takes only seconds. YouTube is policed quite rigorously. Facebook, less so. While this is less of an issue for artists who perform their own material, it can be quite the showstopper for most DJ's and cover/tribute acts although it might turn out to be an interesting evolutionary spur in the DJ art form. In the UK, the governments' clampdown on Free Festivals in the mid-to-late 1980's led directly to the rave scene starting up. Free Festivals were actually quite extensive logistical exercises that were easily disrupted by police action which included impounding of sound systems and musical instruments. The original raves were short, sharp hits with disposable sound systems that were frequently abandoned by the time the police turned up to break up the party. Basically flashmobs with chipboard PA systems and a mixtape. in other words, the way people met up changed to reflect the changes. Similarly for DJ's. Rather than just spinning requests or playlists of copyright works, getting creative with loops, samples, beatboxes, etc., could be the way forward for DJ's [non-musician performers] to continue with their art form and not be shut down by copyright claims.

Aha, it's my own venue which isn't going anywhere 😉 And, yeah, once you make the event listing you can edit it later.

Whew! I managed to get my gig listings for my SL shows posted up to 1 year ahead before the fees came onstream. Yeah, it's a bit disappointing to have to pay L$10 per event listing that free was before but SL is Linden Lab's baby and they can do whatever they want with it even if we don't agree with their decisions. At least it's only a L$ transaction and not a mandatory quest & level-up before being allowed to post an events listing.

I'd certainly agree with Mark Hill's conclusion that SL is a digital environment. Now that we're way past the old hype phases, SL has now become part of the 'digital furniture' of the internet and looks set to stay around for the long haul. It has sufficient turnover and userbase to keep the lights on for a very long time. which would suggest that LL change its focus from 'overnight sensation' to 'community utility service'. My most memorable day of the Hype era was the grey-out of 2007 [IIRC] that broke the illusion. There had been some massive news coverage about SL in the USA and the next day it was raining new resident avatars at Waterhead. So many people were attempting to log in that SL's servers couldn't keep up. Logins took ages and textures took forever to load. It was a breaking point in that most of the new logins that day never came back. No doubt the backend has been scaled up in the following years. SL needs to shift the focus of its advertising. Why not target the Mincraft and Roblox communities and entice them with the opportunity to build their worlds with more sophisticated tools? RP groups like to use SL? Target RL roleplay communities with the opportunities that can be found using SL as an environment.

What, the old place at Baku? I was seriously underwhelmed by what looked like a trainwreck of poorly built memes populated by a closed clique who were so far up their assholes their were looking out at the world through their teeth. Yeah, they all thought they were oh-so-clever and avante-garde because they could write a sim-crasher script. I managed to get myself banned from Baku in and amongst some of my early-day shenanigans.

OK, the out-and-out cynic in me has come up with 'The Ultimate Man Magnet Noob Account Creation Plan'. Here goes: Open up a chain of cyber brothels staffed with scripted animesh NPC hookerbots offering free sexxies to male avatars under 30 days old. Bump them up the destinations listings until one or more get on the rotating list of adult destinations offered at the new account welcome areas. I doubt it would do much for account retention, but it might ramp up the creation of new accounts.

IIRC, I paid US$10 to open my basic account when I joined in 2005. Went premium a week later and never looked back.

According to Scylla's timeline, I'm an SLoldbie. I'm good with that FWIW, I only found out about 4Chan and SA long after I'd joined SL.

I put almost everything I built [except for the big treehouses] into my freebie box. It's all a bit old and primmy but you can find it here: Mystery Super Freebies Collection

OK, I don't know if I'm one of the good or bad guys in this debate. I built my own venue which I use as a place to present and promote my music in the form of 'live gigs' which are live streamed to Facebook and YouTube. Well, about as live as it gets playing along to backing tracks in Cubase. Anyhoo... being the creature of habit that I am I do 3 of these shows every week [to keep my material fresh and sufficiently well-rehearsed for RL gigs at short notice]. I also list my shows in the events calendar quite far ahead [late October 2020 at this time of writing]. Does that make me an events list spammer? Maybe... the algorithm used to pull me up about posting multiple listings for the same event even though it was actually for separate events on different days. I got around that by changing part of the write-up text for each my listings. Also, it's 6 listings in any 24-hour period, not 5. I only ever enter one event listing per event. Also, my main audience is no longer in Second Life but Facebook where my live streamed SL performances reach a larger audience.

...and so is my wife!

Here's one sure-fire way to get most men's attention:

Yes, I'm definitely a green dragoness in RL 😉

Yeah, I hear what you're saying but I did set out my landing point with clearly marked teleport portals marked 'Mystery Venue', 'Mystery Station', 'Moonbase' and 'Monolith' to make things kinda obvious. I guess I'll have to use flashing neon signs in future

Pet peeve: People who are too lazy or entitled to even consider walking their avatar from a landing point to a venue / club. Case in point: my place. It's an explorable build that's open to the public and includes the venue where I put on my live music shows. I built it with a teleport hub at ground level that has teleports to various locations including the venue. But does anyone ever use it? Not a chance. Unless I put the landing point inside the venue, no-one bothers turning up. I mean what does it take? Three steps and a click. But no, that's asking too much. Grrr......

M playing as F in SL here. Lost a few and gained a few friends when I hit the F button for my avatar shape. Wrote a narrative in my profile and picks that more or less covers all bases. I occasionally get compliments for my looks and every now and then a guy will hit on me. Whoop-de-doo! I might flip a coin some time down the road and play SL as M again. Or not. Other than that, I dunno. I don't see any point in making a big deal about it. Things like overcoming creative block are much more important issues to me than my avatar's gender.

I am Spartacus and so is my wife!