Nexeus Fatale

At the end of this week the new royalty rates for broadcasting music gets implemented by the CRB. While there is an effort to prevent these new, oppressive rates from going into effect (and effectively destroying a lot of Internet based radio). This week I decided to take a look at the alternatives for Internet Radio, especially for those who DJ in Second Life where the market place is not as lucrative for DJ’s. Today, I want to focus on another method that makes it viable to play artists music, and for free, and that is by acquiring direct permission.

Getting direct permission may seem very hard and it very well could be. For major bands, you have to ask several people for permission, the artist, the record label, the composer and the song writers (all represented by ASCAP, BMI, SESAC). That is handled by the current structure of SoundExchange and the RIAA (and thus the importance of the current royalty rate situation). Acquiring direct permission is really geared towards two methods, the first is the use of Creative Commons and their Attribution license, the second is by using social networking sites such as ACIDplanet, or MySpace to ask permission from the artists directly.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that has set up free public licenses for authors to indicate the terms of use for their items publicly. Any artist who has made music under the Attribution Creative Commons license has basically given DJ’s and Broadcasters permission to stream their work (there is even a new Music Sharing License that can be used.) While you can scour the net, OWL, is a great upcoming music search engine that compares similar songs to each other. While the concept is great, it is no no Google for music (but the best available). The alternative to using OWL is to search through music sites that allow artists to upload their music, to share or purchase it, and to determine their use through a Creative Commons license, each one operates a bit differently than the other. ccMixter not only allows artists to upload and share their music, but also allows a person to create their own remix stations, remixed individual tracks, it even has remix contents! ccMixter is a great resource for new music and artists, and while you can find some great tracks here, its beauty is its streaming options for Second Life users. If your favorite radio station goes dark because of the upcoming royalty hikes, you can create your own playlist based on ccMixter’s music and stream that! Another service, Jamendo is a bit different, allowing artists to upload their music and apply tags to them (such as the type of music that song falls under) and what creative common license is falls under. Jamendo acts as an intermediary between the listener, broadcaster and the artist, allowing users to pay the artist directly for use of their music. Unlike ccMixter, it’s music is organized better, as artists upload full albums of music for people to use. You can also refine your searches for music from specific countries, you can do a search for Industrial Music from Mexico (which at the time of this posting there were two albums). Magnatune, the third major service feels more like an independent iTunes and SoundExchange. Artists sign up with Magnatune, enabling their music to be purchased directly for as little as $5 and a much as $18 (it is your decision). The beauty about Magnatune is that music can also be licensed by purchasing a license agreement through their site. The problem I find with the Magnatune license program is that not only can be quite expensive for webcasters (you have to license each track individually), but they don’t seem to have a program or license coverage for Internet broadcasters (which I hope would change in the future). Being that they are in Second Life, it would be pretty cool if they give some sort of Second Life broadcasting license coverage program.

Of course, if you have a local band in your area and are friends with them, you could ask for permission directly and arrange agreements with them! The problem is that this can be tedius, hence the advent of ACIDplanet and MySpace. MySpace has a deep music community and it is easy to visit their websites, get further information about the musician, talk to them directly. Before there was MySpace, there was ACIDplanet, which is run by Sony. ACIDplanet is a music creation community, allowing artists to publish their music free on a website, although is pushes its music creation software ACID Pro, just don’t expect anyone on their label to have music available for use. ACIDplanet tends to be a community geared towards Electonic music, it’s a great source for house and trance songs, but again you have to ask the creator for permission to use it directly.

All of these services listed are geared towards Independent music, things you won’t typically hear on MTV or your FM dials. While you won’t have access to play Billboards Top songs, you will have enough access to find new (and great) music, it just won’t be Linkin Park’s or Metallica’s recent releases.

Note: I am not a source of legal advice on music royalty or even music licenses. This article was created to be informative, and to outline options that also fall into the legal realm of music licensing and copyrights. I would advise that you speak to your legal representative, lawyer, or a person familiar with music copyrights before making any final decision.

One of the many conversations I’ve had with a few people after the Virtual Worlds 2007 convention was that of a definition of community, and the definition of an online community. At one point when social platforms such as Second Life, There.com, and MySpace were small, the definition of community was that platform. You were a MySpace-er, a Second Life-er, the community was entirely comprised of those within it. Each of those communities have grown at rates where the definition had to change and the original community aspect of these virtual social interactions were redefined. This parallels the development and the growth of the Internet as it is not just a thing but rather a galaxy where all of these universes exist.

Most of us know the history of the net, it started out as an means of communications between several universities across the world. It was a small galaxy, each university was a universe that was comprised of the things that made it different; it’s text, library, literature, students, thinkers, on and on. As the net grew, the galaxy grew, new universes began to develop and in each universe were the things that made it different, at one point it was easy to index the universes, Business, Entertainment, Music. I remember at one point of the net’s development that AOL was considered the Internet. Now many new universes are appearing that are slowly becoming galaxies (Virtual Worlds/MMO’s, Social Media, Media) and it becomes less about being a “MySpace-er” and more about being on Planet MySpace, less about being a Second Life-er, but more about being in Second Life. At one point those were communities, small planets where everyone knew what was going on. Now on Second Life it’s hard to keep up with everything as many communities within this planet exists (such as the Live Musicians, and Fashion Creators).
Online and virtual communities are now very different, they are cities within the platforms they exist in. A really good example of the RedvsBlue community which (in my example) would exist on the Machinima Planet, in the Media Universe. If you think about it a small IRC server on someone’s home server that hosts 10 people could be akin to Rhode Island. It is in these new definitions of communities where the real synergy for Virtual Worlds lie.

Millions of users, problems accessing accounts, slow loading times, and unable to see messages. Sound familiar? A lot of people feel that this would be the same issues that plague Second Life and it has been some of the beginning points as to why Second Life, instead of growing is collapsing on itself. Both Mark Wallace and Tony Walsh have both expressed their opinions about the recent contingency plans announced by Linden Labs as an admittance of their issues scaling the platform, a measure they have talked about many times in the past two years.
The problems that I mentioned earlier are not problems that persist on Second Life… they are problems that persist on MySpace – the social networking site that has grown in popularity, and with very little signs of slowing down. If you think MySpace is the only online application that will suffer, it is suggested that the entire Internet would suffer the same fate, in time of a pandemic. My point? While many are calling for the beginning of the end of Second Life, I’m claiming it is the end of the Beginning of Second Life, as it begins to mature. One of the problems that Second Life faces is that the structure that it is built on is not secure at all.
A perfect example is today’s reliance on electricity. We have become so used to having it, relying on it, that when the Northeastern United States went pitch black during the Summer of 2003, many realized how fragile our lives are without the use of electricity. A system that has been around for eons was easily taken out stopping the backbone for many of the things that we rely on.
While there are some alarmists, there’s nothing to be alarmed about. When dealing with Virtual Worlds, and MMO’s, Second Life is going through the same growing pains seen by Anarchy Online, World of Warcraft, and Everquest. All boast huge populations, all still alive (relatively), all still working.
Second Life is not going to die, especially with projects such as Open Second Life. While scalability is an issue that Linden Labs does need to fix, and fairly soon, the buffer between the technology and the lack of it scaling properly is actually quite welcomed. The fact that Second Life still crashes, while people are making full time salaries is a great buffer for projects to develop and fail without much limelight, for new ideas to foster, be mapped out, and then fully developed, and to learn from the mistakes that are made when working with Internet based media, and projects. In the case of MySpace, the social network has become so popular, and so big, it is hard to make a splash, or do something entirely new or creative that is just a “MySpace” thing. Big companies, groups, and other people are well ahead of any one person’s idea, are entirely familiar with its system, and have the man-power to do it. In Second Life, there is still time for individual ideas to foster, gain growth and momentum. A few such projects include a non Linden Lab based search system, an event listing directory that has an RSS feed attached, and provides more information than the currently developed Linden Labs one. Tutorials, Wiki’s, community based projects have still yet to be established, and still need the time that is being provided by Second Life not being the most stable client to flourish.
Granted, I’m not a fan of Second Life being broken, or crashing during an event of mine, or not being able to access my account… but it is not necessarily the beginning of the end. Rather, the end of the beginning. Prepare yourself!