It's all a matter of Visibility

When you perform on line, whether it be in a Virtual World or on Livestream, or Ustream,  having a visible event calendar  of when you perform and what time etc is essential.

How else would anyone know when we are  around to wow them with our talent,  and hopefully make that single or album sale!

  

Duh!   Everyone knows that. 

In the world of Secondlife, however, this is not being made very easy!

 The  Music events listings have come in for  quite a bit of criticism in one way or another, in particular on Viewer 2. But in general, with a bit  of patience and persistence,   you do get to see the  music event listings and are then able to make your choices about where to go to listen to Live music.

  Today  a good friend of mine ( and Venue owner) read a thread on Live music in SL and  she became concerned when she saw this reply .

Quote:

"1. Did you know that there were live music performances happening in Second Life nearly every hour of the day and night, every day?" This doesn't seem to be the case anymore.  I remember when I could choose from a variety of live music events any time of the day or night, and there would be multiple pages... but now there's only two or three.  It seems like live music has dropped by 80%.  Am I alone in this observation?"

  Now  most of us realise and know, there are hundreds of  Live music shows in Secondlife. More or less

 24/7 you can go to hear any number of musicians  and performers in hundreds of music venues.

BUT 

Recently Linden Lab decided to make a few changes to  the event  listings.

When you posted your event on the website so it shows up in inworld search and of course on the website, you used to be able to set the maturity rating when you entered your show on the events list ie:  PG, Mature or Adult.

 The vast majority of Live shows are always PG.

   

Now here is the absolutely brilliant new concept recently implemented by LL

You cannot do that anymore.

because Linden Lab have set the event listings visible based on the Sim rating

 NOT the event.
 Which means ONLY PG events are listed on the website and in the default search inworld.

So, 

If you  own your own sim  and it is set to PG, and you have a Live music event, it will show up in the  default event listing. Yay!!!

 If you are  observant enough, you can even click to change your search  rating to include mature and adult listings for music events and voila! music events forever. Yay!!

  Now imagine you  only rent a parcel for your venue and it is on a mature sim  because perhaps the owner has a business there. 

You post your event and

 it doesn't show in search.. 

because if your venue is on a  Mature or Adult sim, you have no choice, the listing will  be given the sim rating, not the event  and of course you can't change that rating if

 your venue space is rented on a Mature sim.

So Linden Lab have now in one  fell swoop  excluded  quite an awful lot of music events. 

At the time of writing this, I looked in the listings are there were only 28 live music events listed in the next 24 hours..

  usually I would be looking to see well over 150 listed over 24 hours.

For goodness sake bring back the  ability for those posting their Live music events to set the maturity rating regardless of the SIM rating, otherwise we will all be off to another world where perhaps  it is all about the visibility and music.

 I do  find this all rather ironic,  as the latest  LL email newsletter is about  Live music.

Anyway, do continue to Rock On as usual in SL

 but don't be surprised  if you find yourself  pretty much  in your own  company when you do.