The bizarre online musical world of Second Life

by Sam Sutherland

January 27, 2014

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There is a place where you can watch Alice Cooper perform with Rob Zombie and Slash, catch the Pink "Party Started" tour, and see all four Ramones... alive. A place where Chamillionaire does meet-and-greets and Duran Duran has their own island. Second Life.

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There is a place where you can watch Alice Cooper perform with Rob Zombie and Slash, catch the Pink “Party Started” tour, and see all four Ramones… alive. A place where Chamillionaire does meet-and-greets and Duran Duran has their own island. Second Life.

Launched in 2003, Second Life allows users to create an avatar and then just live online. That’s sort of it. Its big media moment came a few years ago, when it was heralded as a potentially world-altering big thing.

It wasn’t, but Second Life maintains a dedicated user base to this day. And they want to rock.

During the heyday of Second Life growth, companies like American Apparel and Adidas set up shop inside the game. And so did record labels. It started with meet-and-greets, where artists like Chamillionaire and Hinder and some guy named Lance Rembrant found a way to turn an everyday promotional activity into a potential headline.

There were listening parties — Regina Spektor debuted her 2006 record, Begin to Hope, inside her Second Life loft. You can still visit it. It looks nice. You should.

Second Life’s audio streaming capabilities — the way Sire Records was able to play Spektor’s record — led Suzanne Vega to stage the first in-game live performance in 2006. And so Second Life developed its own music scene, starting with a user named Astrin Few.

Von Johin became the first Second Life musician to sign a record deal based on his following in Second Life. Johin plays several times a week in game at one of the many venues that have been built by other residents. He did this so well, a record label signed him.

Redzone was the first band to tour Second Life, spending a week playing in places like Mystery Megacorp in the Sprawler region and the Black Sun in Nexus Prime in the Gibson region. Later, they hosted a day-long festival in the Wastelands.

Not every musician in Second Life is simply streaming from their bedroom — the much more experimental Avatar Orchestra Metaverse makes all their sounds inside the game itself.

These artists developed alongside Second Life theatre troupes, art galleries, and ballet companies. All very serious. While real life musicians like Few, Johin, and Redzone have taken advantage of Second Life’s unique landscape to find a new audience, a threat has emerged: tribute bands.

For 4000 Linden dollars, the in-game currency that converts to about $16 Canadian, promotion companies inside Second Life will stage a Muse concert or an AC/DC show. It’s pretty simple – they dress up some avatars to look like the band, program some lights, and stream a pre-existing live recording.

Tags: Music, News, WTF, Alice Cooper, Beyonce, chamillionaire, Guns N' Roses, Pink, Regina Spektor, Rob Zombie, second life, The Ramones, video games

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