I met with NANCE Brody last night, and she’s on board for the first round of Beta testing!  If you see NANCE perform, grab a couple of her tunes and enjoy the show!  Her excitement for the project has given me a new boost to make this awesome!  Artist pages will be working (hopefully) by the end of the day today, as well as the ability to change your password to one that’s a little easier to remember than the random one given to you at your first purchase.  I’m looking into the whole land ownership thing this week, and should have a kiosk available for password resetting if you happen to forget yours between visits as well.  I really don’t want to store e-mail addresses or anything like that, so all of that type of communication will have to happen within SL.

The artist sign-up process is going to remain in-world as well, and most likely through individual appointments for the time being.  I’m very concerned that an automated process would be opening the project up to misuse (consider if someone signed up and sold copyrighted music illegally) and I want to keep it as effective and useful for artists, venues, and fans as possible for as long as possible.  All I need is the RIAA jumping down my throat for someone else’s bad idea.

Speaking of, Artists within the US (and probably most other countries) should educate themselves on mechanical royalties if they intend to sell cover versions of published songs.  Technically you should be making yourself aware of it anyway, because performing copyrighted, published material requres some royalty payments.  Anyway, I’ll do some research into the best way for artists to “stay legal” and I’ll just have to trust that everyone’s doing it.  I could be wrong (and the lawyer I’m meeting with will let me know, I’m sure), but I’m pretty sure that falls into the artist’s responsibility, and not mine.  It will most likely result in a couple of checkboxes when adding a song that say “Is this copyrighted?” and “If so, do you intend to pay the appropriate royalties to the songwriters and/or publishers?”  I know it seems like a pain, but believe it or not there are people that make their full living on writing those songs, and every 8.5 cents helps!

More updates to follow, just wanted to document the occasion of the first artist (thanks, NANCE!) and get some of that stuff out of the way.  Peace.

OK, spent pretty much the entire day getting the SECONDtunes Artist Vendor up and running.  Boy was it a fun blend of loving and hating the Lindens!  Let’s just say that the heaps and stacks, they were collidin’.  Finally, though, the sucker is robust.  I’ve tested it with 1,000 songs (my goal was 100, but as hard as that was to get to, I had to at least see the fruits of my labor as it climbed into the quadruple digits!) and I think it’s safe to say that it’ll work with as many tracks as an artist dare throw at it.

The current situation is that mp3 files will have to be hosted off-site.  I may offer storage for a per-file or monthly subscription (payable in Lindens, of course!).  I want to make it free for artists to begin using it, and remote storage was an absolute must for that to happen.  We’ll see what the interest is, and how other artists respond before delving too far into all of that.

The Vendor is set up to display relevent data (Artist, Title, Description/Album, Price, and whether the price is fixed or suggested) for every song.  You click through to browse, and pay the object to buy the MP3!  It all works pretty seamlessly, I think, but I’m very open to any suggestions as to how I can make it better for listeners.

When a customer buys a tune, the Vendor pays SECONDtunes Sellers (an account I created just to collect Lindens) a 15% commission on the sale.  I thought a lot about what a fair rate would be, and let’s just say that I WISH our real-life band made 85% of our digital sales.

In addition to this website and live performances where the vendor should sit prominently in front of the audience (hint, hint), I’m looking into purchasing some land to have a “virtual record store” showcasing all the t² Artists.  This will include vendors for each artist, as well as a streaming radio broadcast of the tunes being sold through t² (assuming that the artists are all cool with that).

I’ve been amazed at 1) the enthusiasm both from the artists and the listening community in Second Life and 2) the utter lack of quality resources for artists in Second Life.  Hopefully this tool will begin to fill a void and many will follow suit in investing in the Live Music community of Second Life.

I’m going to start drafting a Privacy Policy / TOS and get to work making the web side of things just as awesome as things in the metaverse. But for now…  Sleep.

OK, after the first long day of coding (and learning), I’ve got basic functionality!  Not too shabby, if I do say so myself!

1. Avatar pays Vendor
2. Vendor checks to see if Avatar is already registered.  If not, assigns a temporary password.
3. Vendor grants permission to download the MP3 to the Avatar
4. Vendor sends back a “Thank you” and a reminder of the website URI (and password if it’s new).
5. Avatar goes to http://www.secondtunes.com and Logs in
6. Avatar is given a list of tunes that they have purchased.
7. Avatar can download (the actual address of the mp3 is hidden to the Avatar, and the link they click on only works if they are signed in.)

Hopefully I’ll get some of the “inner workings” more streamlined and get the edit password/profile page up and running tomorrow.  Overall, I couldn’t be happier!  IM me (Bobby Fairweather) in-world if you’d like to try it out by purchasing the MP3 of me performing Coldplay’s “Yellow” on New Year’s at Bibi’s Cafe.

I will be getting SECONDtunes ready for the public in the following weeks, and will need some artists and venue owners to help out in the debugging process.  Please IM me in-world (Bobby Fairweather) and let me know if you’re interested in helping to test this much-needed service out!