Dolmere Talamasca - Second Life "resident"

BUCKY TONE
Bucky Tone from Magnatune was the first person to step up to the mic and present to the nearly packed house. Magnatune has been around for 4 years. It is a "real company" with people making a living off of it. Artists receive 50% of the revenue on their sales with the rest going to this "internet label" to keep Magnatune alive and running. With a motto like "We're not evil" I can't see why an indie artist looking for exposure would skip this site - post your stuff there on a non-exclusive contract and make some money with the good guys!

Magnatune recently launched 40 live streams of music on their label. It appears that each stream is a genre of music that they sell. Bucky says that these are free to use and something that they are making available so that "we can stream them into our spaces." An example of one of these streams is http://sl.magnatune.com/Electronica.

During his presentation Bucky discussed the open source streaming server Icecast and the EZStream client as tools for streaming. I love that he did a good job of pointing out how terrible the AOL owned Shoutcast software is :) (As an aside, his speech of the history of Shoutcast and Icecast reminded me of the old Green Witch radio!)

The big controversy of the night came from Bucky. He spent a good portion of his time discussing why Magnatune does not have to worry about folks like ASCAP and BMI. There was a wide variety of discussion on legal topics. He was not offering legal advise, but rather his message seemed to boil down to something like "be careful of how you use works created by others and where possible use your own originals."

Bucky pointed out that playing cover songs, as far as the RIAA is concerned, is seen as the same as playing the original. So any collecting publisher like ASCAP or BMI is likely see a cover streamed into SL as the same thing as streaming the original song. There were a lot of live musicians present and quite a bit of discussion as to the differences between playing covers live for say a wedding or club gig and playing covers as a feed to SL.

Some quotes from Bucky on this topic:

"You can, nowhere on the planet, play a cover song live without paying ASCAP/BMI and the other large collecting agents."

"For profit/not for profit does not matter."

Here's a portion of a conversation that made me laugh. Permission to reprint these chat lines was granted by all parties quoted:

[13:24] Doubledown Tandino: /bMI crashed my funeral!!!
[13:24] jaynine Scarborough: reallly double???
[13:24] Chill Moksung: /dd u clown lol
[13:25] JueL Resistance: um he's not dead LMAO
[13:25] Doubledown Tandino: /at my funeral my song I played was "dick in a box" .... Justin Timberlake wanted to sue me

I just want to note to anyone interested: not agreeing with bad news does not mean the messenger (the owner of a successful and cool internet label) is ignorant. Yes, it was a very negative discussion. Bucky points out that it's a mess and that's why he's on the board of Creative Commons. CC may not be the best alternative, but at least someone is trying to come up with a means of competing with a system that has served no one other than the record companies for way too long.

I would refer folks to the post over at SECONDtunes related to this very issue: http://secondtunes.com/2007/01/12/new-artists-questions-about-covers/. However, when I shared this link to the group Bucky responded "[13:39] Bucky Tone: HA! just try to sell cover songs through SL and get a Harry Fox license. Omigod that's funny."

It's good to have opinionated people around. I'll note that while things did get a bit heated throughout this event NOT ONE SINGLE person resorted to personal attacks. A fine example of being able to talk about the issues at hand without being a tool. All told this was a perfect session, maybe because it was also "Prok thing free". :)

INTERLUDE
I must say that there is still nothing that annoys me in SL MORE than people trying to cajole others into using "/" or "/0" in their outbound chat. If you use "/" it shows in the chat window but it suppresses the typing animation and typing sound. If you type "/0" it just shows your text, stipping off the /0 characters, but also suppresses the typing animation and sound. Why do people want you to suppress the sound? Because when they're at an event where they're listening to a stream they don't want to be bothered by the clickety clack noise while trying to hear the music or presenter of the live stream.

However, a client simply needs to open the preference page by pressing control-P. In there under the Audio & Video tab you find the streaming audio settings. You also find a slider for "sound effects". Turn this sucker down - turn it all the way down. With streaming audio on and sound effects off you'll hear no distractions at all. Not just the typing animation noise, but any little wewtwewt or honkhonk noises people use in animations! Can you see why I would complain about being reminded to waste my time, energy and effort to suppress my own typing noise? They could simply mute the noise that isn't the stream they want to hear. By CHOOSING not to mute sound effects they're subject to hear all kinds of in-world crap from crickets to screams to whatever sound effects were uploaded. It's SO very rude of these people to make this the average user's problem - in fact it strikes me as rather elitist, they might be thinking they're super special holding the knowledge that "/" suppresses the typing noise.

No, that's not a personal attack folks. I'm not singling anyone out or calling anyone names there. I'm just complaining a bit :)

While I'm being a bit negative here the other thing that annoys me is when people try to moderate the live chat. Conversations happen at events whether they're on topic or slightly off. People are socializing at the events - that's one of the biggest draws of SL - the group chat room socializing ability. Let's not try to get everyone to sit still and listen to the lecture please.

MELVIN TOOK
Melvin Took then stood up and talked about the technical aspects of streaming. He talked about using a single computer to use Second Life and stream at the same time. He didn't go into the multiple computer setup - though it's very much a preferred method if you can manage it. Second Life consumes a lot of computer resources - dedicating a computer to it while another machines encodes and streams your audio frees much needed resources for your stream to work best. He did a demonstration of the difference between 64K and 128K streams using a pre-recorded streaming sample.

Melvin says he's on a Mac and only knows what happens to setup stremaing on the PC from what he's told. He says he knows it's tougher on the PC because there are many more variables. On the Mac he mentions using Nicecast (a great program that I use) as the program to publish to an Icecast, Icecast2 or Shoutcast server. It's very easy to switch back and forth between different streaming server types with this program, something he says he hears is tough on the PC side. Shoutcast servers appear to be the most common in Second Life for some reason.

Melvin points out that with Nicecast you can "hijack" the audio from a specific application rather than streaming the audio from the entire PC. This way you don't hear system beeps, instant messages and other sounds in the stream being sent from the musician's computer. He also mentioned that he streams using Nicecast by hijacking the audio from Apple's GarageBand application - a tool that comes free with new Macs. This application allows you to capture live audio from various sound inputs and add digital effects.

Melvin uses a Firewire input to send two separate audio signals into his computer. He then digitally mixes the two tracks together. He uses a hardware compressor on his microphone before it gets to the computer to really warm up the mic sound.

Melvin also did a side by side demo of a song before and after he added GarageBand effects. It was a very impressive comparison - I hope that many of the musicians listening asked themselves "how do I get me some of this?"

Another funny quote from Doubledown that came up during Melvin's discussion on effects:
[13:59] Doubledown Tandino: /I process my obscure songs with a "make this track a mainstream marketable hit" equalizer

Melvin also did a great discussion on clipping your sound - "always check your levels and make sure you're not riding in the red." He makes the point that if you're clipping and distorted you could be making some great music but it's tough for the listener to sit through. I myself have left a half dozen shows I would have loved to have seen for this reason. JueL asks that fans of live music tell the musician when they are distoring. I'll note that I IMed those artists who were too distorted at the time and they were unable to fix it at the time. I can understand that it would be tough to fix something on the fly while also trying to perform - but it's also tough to listen to a bad mix.

Following that he mentioned mic screens, or pop filters. He recommended that you get one on a gooseneck to help you position it in front of your mic to suppress those popping Ps, etc. You can equalize some of it out by removing the very bottom end, but the best thing to do is not let it get in there in the first place. A lot of Melvin's speech reminded me of the old GIGO - garbage in, garbage out - get it right at the audio capture step or "fix it in the mix" :)

"It's great music and it sounds better when it's clear and balanced" - Melvin Took

I simply loved that Melvin had prepared a series of relevant song clippings demonstrating the various problems one might cause when streaming.

INTERLUDE 2
It is interesting to note that this meeting about streaming into SL ended up with the same typical chat room troubleshooting for those who could not tune in to the stream. I'm not complaining about this, just making the note. I myself have had a few (just a few) instances where everyone else had the stream and for various reasons I could not get it.

Slim Warrior hosted this at Menorca. She offered to run another of these events if anyone is interested. If you are unhappy that you were not able to attend then please IM Slim and let her know that you're interested in a another of these types of presentations.

DIMIVAN LUDWIG
Next up to the mic was DimiVan Ludwig. He took a moment at the start to tell everyone not to freak out about Bucky's comments about playing covers in SL. He offered to chat with anyone interested in his experiences with ASCAP and BMI.

His presentation was rather short - I think Melvin's preso stole his thunder a bit :)

DimiVan made the point that your audience does not have the same type of speakers or playback system as you do. This means that there is a large variety of quality on the other end when you're streaming and it's not a bad thing to keep in mind.

INTERLUDE 3
Slim then got on the mic and showed off a new toy which sounded a bit like an octaver for voice. She introduced Cleon Goff who was presenting to us via text chat. Cleon was the only presenter who chose to skip the audio streaming option and text chat instead. Now HERE is a good reason to ask the chat banter to stop! :)

CLEON GOFF
Cleon's RL name seems to be CC Chapman - find more info at http://cc-chapman.com/.

Cleon's topic was podcast safe music. This kind of took us full circle round again to the beginning of the meeting. Cleon points out that podcasting can be fun but not if it means getting sued over. Podcast safe music is that which artists give their permissions for their music to be play their music on a podcast. http://music.podshow.com is THE biggest place for artists to clear their music for podcasters to play

There was quite a bit of discussion and it seemed like nice stuff for the SL musician. I kinda tuned out here though. As I've stated before on my blog - I am not into podcasts. To hear someone talk about the virtues of podcasting and why an artist needs to be included in them is a bit beyond me. No biggie - I'm hoping that it was useful for the large audience of musicians and the like that were present.

Regarding podcasts one comment that came up from Astrin Few was that people are welcome to upload stuff to blog.slmusic.org

As an aside during this presentation Spence Wilder brought up Brian Ibbot's show called CoverVille.

Oh, and I'll close with a pic or two of the somewhat vocal NetherMind Bliss. Why? Look at the av and then you tell me why :)