The Rise [and fall] of Virtual Music Worlds?
Thursday, June 14th, 2007CNN ran a story on the 29th May about Concerts merge live, Internet and virtual world which poses a number of questions for all of us interested in virtual live performances, whatever your role.
“Live events could be the music “product” of the future” they state, with the capstone being “But once that curiosity factor dies, will anybody still care?”
Based on my extensive experience performing in SL over the last year and a half [300+ gigs] and building a successful in-world micro-community based around Live performance as the core goal [as opposed to acting primarily as a CD sales pitch] I would say yes, but not for the reasons that the current crop of brand marketers and record company execs might think!
This NYT article also touches on some interesting points related to getting in closer contact with your fan base and the issues in managing it.
Here’s a quick shortlist of some of the current players, apart from SecondLife, that are in this space. I’ll be reviewing these in more detail from different perspectives [performer, audience, advertiser, etc] in future posts.
MTV with Virtual Laguna Beach and Virtual Lower East Side. 3pointD have a short piece on the vLES here.
The virtual Lower East Side is based on the Doppleganger platform apparently, who already have MusicLounge in beta.
Nightlife Interactive also appear to have something in play.
The Videoranch seems to based around professional musicians, and I’ll be checking that out this week.
MusicWorld3D rounds off this quick shortlist.
Update:
vSide from Doppleganger has launched, with a walled garden brand marketing focus on the teen market. They have just signed their first reup with Interscope records, who seem to have been involved with the music lounge mentioned above, which itself has now morphed into vSide.
Stay tuned for more in depth looks at the above!]]>