As I hinted last week, a few people are already offering commercial video services with video capture from virtual-reality.  Here is an interview with AWM Mars, who has been doing that for years.  His web site is at  WBA-Advertizing.

This interview was done entirely in Second Life, on the modern equivalent of paper (notecards).  I gave AWM a set of questions and he supplied written responses.  I have only made cuts to focus on the current topic and to avoid subjects that cannot adequately be handled in one article.   I may get back to him in a follow-up interview on some of these topics later.    

Is there a businesse model in this ecology? Ecology: the study of organisms in a selected environment in terms of their interactions with other organisms and with the environment.  

Performers.  Venues.  Audience. 

A while back I talked about the entertainment ecology from the viewpoint of some of the performers: Promotions and the music business in Second Life.  Earlier I suggested that there could be business opportunities in this ecology:  Real Entertainment from the Virtual Village.   Those comments provoked some controversy:  Music as a business in Second Life

The Club Red Door opened up this past Friday.  With a special mandate: 
 “Where the blues never end.”  
 

Run by Madmax Huet, the place is open 24/7.   Sometimes with live performers (including Madmax) singing the blues.  Maybe sometimes with a DJ riding the blues.    Sometimes with web radio streaming the blues. 

The Red Door offers Subscribe-O-Matic.   Subscribe-O-Matic is getting increasingly popular with performers and venues as a substitute for SL groups when the primary function is to send out notices about events.  Subscribe-O-Matic lets the owner send out notices in SL, but people can subscribe without spending a group slot.  (Most people who are active in SL, need all their group slots and cannot afford to spend them on notice groups.)    Subscribe-O-Matic is free (at this writing) if the number of subscribers is small.

Can you have pros in a game?  Ask the people who buy ads on the Super bowl.  Some people in Second Life recently organized a group they call Seasoned Pro Industries.  I paid attention because one of the organizers was my friend, Avvy Barzane.  He is a go-getter, so I pay attention when I see him going after something. 

Since Avvy Barzane is a well-known musical act in Second Life, the group has a large number of musical performers, talent representatives, and event managers in its member list.  Thus it is a good route for communication among these.

My earlier discussions of music business in SL provoked some controversy in the comment sections.  The comments deserve more attention than they will get in that location, so I will review some of them here.    You can go back to the originals by following this link..

 I can hear the voices from the skeptic tank right now.
“Nah.  You get real entertainment from TV.”

 OK.  I won’t debate the nature of reality here.  Certainly not against the proposition that Television is reality.  My idea of real entertainment is what entertains people. For example, the music business in Second Life.

The music business in Second Life

There must be hundreds of musical acts performing in SL.   I have more than thirty listed on my web page, Musicians in Second Life.  And these are just the musicians who have been booked on Saturdays Wild, my weekly variety show.  Here is a list compiled by Crap Mariner of musical
 performers in Second Life offering CD’s or MP3’s on iTunes on Amazon. 

Jwheels Presents: Thursdays.  6 – 7 pm SLT.  Based on Hobo Island, but wheeling around the Second life Comedy Venues. 

Starting Thursday, Feb. 19.   At the Vagabond Theater.  Right across the street from the Hobo Island Welcome Plaza.  Jwheels Carver, famous MC for Saturdays Wild, will begin a weekly comedy series.  Starring. this week: 

• The Incomparable Lauren Live    -- Lauren’s blog.
• The incredible Older the Elder
• The intractable Jwheels Carver (right)

The weekly show will often be at Hobo Island.   Sometimes they will be at one of the many other comedy venues around Second Life.