OK, so I was gone for another (almost 7-week) stretch and a few things happened.  First, the password resetter broke (thanks for the “upgrade”, LL!), then the ability to download larger files broke (thanks for the “upgrade”, web host!).  Both of these issues have been fixed.

It’s also come to my attention that the Album Vendor that many artists were given was no-mod.  As much as I’d love for everyone to be selling my CD (the default in the vendor), I’m thinking you’d rather hock your own wares.  I apologize for that inconvenience.  The album vendor is now included in the “Startup Kit” that’s available from the store in Sweetlove Music, and I’ll soon have it up on SLBoutique (or whatever it’s called now) and SLExchange.

Also added a snazzy little thing on the artist page.  It’s only got a handful of artists in it now (our top sellers) but I’ll be adding everyone as time permits.  Don’t you worry!

Thanks for spreading your music with SECONDtunes!

Bobby

OK folks, I know I’ve been talking about these things for quite some time, so I’m happy to report that we’ve got some huge news!

• ALBUMS SUPPORT!
• That’s right, guys! If you log into your account as an artist, you should see two brand-spanking-new buttons! “Add Album” and “Manage Albums”. They should be pretty self-explanatory, and the vendor is about 100x simpler than the current multi-song vendor. We’re talking one prim, click for info, pay to buy the album. It’s that simple. There’s still no singles vendor (one song per vendor), but you could very easily create that by making a one-song album and using the album vendor. Temporary workaround should hold you over. Oh, and these vendors are totally linkable, just make sure that the ROOT PRIM (the last one you link) doesn’t have any scripts in it.
• DELETE THOSE ROGUE SONGS!
• In the early stages of t2, many people added multiple copies of the same song, songs without MP3s, and otherwise tunes they just didn’t care to keep available. If you retired those songs before anyone bought them, you can now delete them permanently. Unfortunately, if someone bought them before they retired, we need to keep them in the system. This is to protect fans that haven’t downloaded their content from having them disappear on them!
• RESET YOUR PASSWORD!
• I can’t count the number of passwords I’ve reset manually in the past 4 months, but now any SECONDtunes user can click the “I forgot my password” link on the sign-in page and have a new one IMed to them in-world. Occasionally SL’s Object E-mail system gets a little crazy, so if it doesn’t work, try again in 15 minutes. If all else fails you can still give me a holler in-world.

Those 3 items were huge demands from artists, and personally I think that the albums support feature will increase usability at live performances incredibly. The vendors didn’t work so well in laggy situations, but the new album vendors should be just what the doctor ordered!

Here’s a look at what’s on the horizon as far as development is concerned:

• SINGLES VENDORS
• The ability to sell one song at a time is a must for live performances (thanks to lag). For the time being, see the above workaround. This will be here very soon, though!
• MP3 TIPJARS
• You will be able to assign ONE track to be given away for tips (with a configurable minimum amount). There will be NO COMMISSION paid to SECONDtunes for this service. We’re hoping to increase both tips to musicians (by offering an incentive) and album sales on SECONDtunes (by giving a “free taste”). Of course it will be full mod, so whether it’s a guitar-wielding gargoyle or a simple guitar case, you can give fans something back for their generosity.
• MP3 SPLODERS
• Sploders are huge in SL, so why not have them give away an MP3 instead of money, clothes, or whatever? Venue owners can pick the artists, and what percentage they’d like to receive above the overhead (just like the associates program in the current vendors). As soon as it’s reached critical mass it will explode, giving a song to the winner.
• ARTIST BLASTS
• Let’s face it: The groups system in SL sucks. The artists should have all noticed that they’ve started to receive occasional messages from me through an object called “SECONDtunes Artist Blast”. This is the beginnings of a “fan club” type system that will allow you to communicate with your fans SIMPLY! Through a single-click interface, they’ll be able to sign up for your blasts at live performances, and you can let them know when you’re playing, when new downloads are available, or just what you’re watching on TV. Most of the work is done for this on the LSL end, it’s just tying together the databases here and getting it out there. This will be free for all t2 artists!

That about covers it for today! Thanks for your patience, and let me know if there’s anything I can do for you! Artists that want a custom album vendor, just let me know and we’ll work something out (probably in the realm of L$1k). Of course the standard vendor is moddable, so the only reason to pay me is if you want it done quickly and you can’t do it yourself.

Enjoy the updates! Time for me to finally sleep now!

OK, so I’ve been insanely busy touring with my real-life band, and have had to let registrations for SECONDtunes fall silent for about a month.  I apologize to artists that were anxious to start selling in-world ASAP, but duty calls.  I’m hoping in the next couple of months to set up a couple of in-world liaisons that are 1) familiar enough with SECONDtunes to help new artists get acquainted and 2) I trust enough to handle some of this stuff for me.  I’ve got a couple of folks in mind, but current artists, if you’re interested, let me know.  I’ve also almost finished albums support and the much-needed in-world password reset object.  Again, I apologize for the silence for the last month, but it’ll be worth the wait, I promise!  This will definitely happen again come summertime, so I hope to have the in-world representatives trained and ready before then.

Also, if anyone ever needs to contact me when I’ve disappeared, please e-mail bobby@bobbyfairweather.com.  The IM to E-mail isn’t the most reliable, and I cap in about 3 hours anymore.

Thanks and I’ll see you in SL!

Things are progressing almost faster than I can keep up with them!  I’ve been pretty sick in RL over the past couple of weeks, thanks to too many night spent driving instead of sleeping, probably.  Anyway, there will be a major update to the vendor this week, and I wanted to let everyone know what the update will consist of:

• A (barely) better looking vendor
• The ability to display multiple users in a vendor
• The ability for venue or store owners to sell your music for an additional commission (it will not change your take, it will add to the selling price in THEIR VENDOR ONLY, depending on what markup they assign).
• Added ability to auto-update your vendor.  All you will have to do to bring your vendor up-to-date is rez an “Update Patch” object within 20m of your vendor(s).
• With the auto-update ability means that you can make significant changes to your vendor’s look and feel (ie- add “Tip Me” buttons, an answering machine, or pretty much anything else you want.  The next step (for version 1.0) is to have an API for changing the way users interact with a vendor.  Hopefully this will inspire innovation and new designs for the vendors.  If they’re really cool you may even be able to sell your pimped out vendor to other SECONDtunes artists and/or venue/store owners.  More info on this coming soon!
• An added item to your “Artist Information” for a texture to display for your spot in vendors.  By default it’s just a simple “t² Artist” square.  If you visit the store in Yongnam, you can see that a couple of artists have textures already, and it makes for a much cooler experience.
• A couple of performance fixes to make it run a little smoother (small things like not having to click the vendor to initiate it after permissions are set).
• A distributable notecard with a simple primer for new listeners.  This should save a couple of the “so how does this work” questions.
• More stuff I’m not remembering now because I’m still doped up on cold & flu medicine.

I’m way excited about the new API, because I’m no dummy when it comes to understanding my limitations, especially in terms of building in SL.  I’m getting pretty good at the scripting stuff, but trying to make cool stuff with the touchpad on my laptop while on the road proves to be a giant pain in the butt!  This will hopefully provide a creative outlet for folks, as well as improving the product as a whole.  Some ideas for things folks will be able to do: Replace the Object Text method of displaying song information possibly with XYText or some other texture-font, Create a chat-based version that could possibly interact with text-based clients like SLeek, Make a menu-based artist or song selector, or plenty of other things I haven’t even thought of.  You can expect to see the API begin to take shape with version 0.91.  I’ll probably put a wiki up to allow for contributions of cool scripts, as well as to let folks know about new calls and functions available.

Be expecting this gigantic update in the next 48 hours!

Everyone go check out the Ava Star this week, as we featured 8 performances by SECONDtunes artists in our ad!  We’ll see how the next couple of weeks go, as far as whether this will be a regular thing or not, but for now one of the many benefits of signing up with t² is the possibility of being featured in our ads!  The best way to show the product off is to send folks to your shows, so please keep your profiles updated with your current schedules!  We’ll have the events database up and running very soon, which will revolutionize the live music scene in SL, I think.  Imagine not having to depend on Search or Groups to know who is playing RIGHT NOW.  That’s what the t² LIVE HUD is going to provide for live music fans.  We’re also working on the t² SOUNDCHECK HUD, which will provide artists and their trusted “sound engineers” a way to communicate quietly and effectively about sound mixing issues that may arise.  And like everything else in SECONDtunes, these tools will be available at absolutely no cost.

Stay tuned!

OK, I’m working a bit on the backend today, and wanted to let everyone know what things are changing.

• At the request of more than one user, the MP3s that listeners download will have a filename containing the Artist Name and Title of the Song. You can test this by downloading any MP3s you have purchased since registering. It cleans out all special characters (non-alphanumeric) beforehand, so I guess keep that in mind for titles (don’t have them depend on a weird symbol).
• The directory of hosted MP3s is no longer public. This was just an oversight since I didn’t originally plan on allowing hosted files.
• Fixed the “Official Website” link to work when artists do not include “http://” in front of their address. (Just for common knowledge, without http:// the browser thinks that the link is pointing to a directory on whatever server it’s on.)
• You should see your “Artist ID” in your “Edit Profile” section. This will be important soon, because in future updates I won’t create custom vendors for each artist, they will have to edit a notecard with their Artist ID. This will make it MUCH simpler for you to update your vendor, I promise!
• Artist URIs are working now.  To give anyone a link to your SECONDtunes profile, just edit the “Artist URI” line in your profile, and point folks to it!  Mine is http://www.secondtunes.com/artists/bobbyfairweather.
• More small changes coming today.

So a lifelong dream of mine, to own and operate a record store, is about to come to fruition in Second Life.  The second phase of SECONDtunes is implementing a vendor/associates program that allows anyone and everyone to set up shop and sell the quality tunes of SL artists.  It will work like a normal agreement, where they buy for a percentage of retail.  The difference will be that they will set their profit margin.  For instance, consider the following scenario:

JueL Resistance is selling a great live recording of “Cigarette” that she did at one of her Naked Acoustic Sessions for L$400.

If “JayJay’s Record Store” would like to carry this particular tune, and have decided that they’d like to make a 10% margin off of each sale, the vendor in their store will sell “Cigarette” for L$440, and they’ll recieve the L$40 that’s above JueL’s performance-selling price.  The L$400 will be split the same way it always is with 15% commission going to SECONDtunes, and the lion’s share going to the artist.

Another feature I’m considering implementing is shared profits.  To use JueL as an example again (mostly because she’s been such an evengelist for SECONDtunes so far!), she just played a set along with Cylindrian Rutabega.  Maybe they played a killer version of “Hammer and a Nail” (it’s the Indigo girls, and if you haven’t, you should).  So, after sorting all the licensing out, they decide to sell their rockin’ awesome version of the already great tune on SECONDtunes.  Either artist would be able to add the song and “Share” it with the other.  That way, every time JueL sells a copy, Cylindrian gets half (or whatever percentage they agree on) of the song’s revenue.  I know that these things could be worked out outside of the service, but it just seems like one more thing that could be automated to make the experience that much better for the artists!

In other news, I demoed the vendor to one of the founders of Magnatune Records today, and have my fingers crossed that they’ll decide 1) to sell their artists’ songs in-world, and 2) to use SECONDtunes to do it.

Tell all of your artist friends to give me a shout in-world.  I will soon have a teleport spot for anyone to check it out while I’m off doing my crazy real-life thing, but for now it’s up close and personal, baby!

Vendor update coming up in the next couple of days that will eliminate the free t-shirt annoyance (it really seemed like a good idea, I promise) and will spit out a notecard to new listeners to explain the process in better detail.

I’m also looking to join the “Upload Song” function to the “Add Song” page.  I originally didn’t intend on hosting everyone’s MP3s, but it seems to be a real need for the artists, so we’re going to make it happen.  I may be on the lookout for a better server soon as well, so if anyone knows of sweet deals in that department, let me know.

Until next time,
Bobby Fairweather

So thanks to JueL and all the songs she’s already selling on SECONDtunes, we worked out a bug that effects vendors that are selling more than 10 songs.  If you’ve got 11 or more songs listed, contact me in world ASAP for a fix, if not you can probably wait until the next major release.  I’m working on making the vendor auto-updating to avoid the insane amount of inventory I’m currently throwing around, but for now we’re keeping it grassroots, baby!

New artist and quite possibly inhuman vocal talent Cylindrian Rutabaga and JueL Resistance played a set tonight that I totally wish I’d been able to attend.  JueL played the “lead stream” and Cylindrian provided backup piano, vocals, and had a percussionist as well in the mix.  If anyone’s doing cool stuff like that, be sure to record it!  The beauty of SECONDtunes is going to be the cool live cuts available for download by SL listeners, I think!

Speaking of the beauty of SECONDtunes, the object in your vendor SHOULD be mod/copy.  This means that I have no problem with you making it look however you want.  I’m currently working out a way to 1) change to colors of the hover text to whatever you want, 2) have “playlist vendors” that only display specific songs (if you wanted a vendor for different albums, shows, etc. to keep at your venue, house, or whatever), and 3) auto-deliver the script into the object so that you don’t have to do any crazy copy/paste stuff to get your super cool SECONDtunes vendor updated to the latest version of the script.  The good news is that I hope within a month to have a semi-permanent script in place (ie. it will only be updated outside of a 2 or 3-month release schedule for security issues that need to be fixed NOW).

Does anyone have any decent land for a decent price?  I really want to build a record store like very soon, but I just can’t pay what many people are asking for land.  Realistically, I only need enough prims for a small building and vendors for each artist.  I hope to add a small stage and some other cool stuff later, but for now I’m happy with a very barebones place.  One of the really awesome features I hope to unveil soon will depend on me having somewhere permanent to park objects that interact with the website.

Thanks to all the artists and listeners!  We’re up to over 50 people who have bought music from SECONDtunes, and the number is growing every day!  I really anticipate a very slow curve until the average music listener has become accustomed to purchasing SECONDtunes Artists’ music.  The thing about an original idea is that noone knows what to think about it just yet!  Keep spreading the word and plopping that vendor out at shows.  If you’re looking for something to say between songs, make sure you mention the vendor and how it works (it will auto-register them and give them a password, then they can jump on the web and download their music!).   Also, Artists, don’t be afraid to evangelize the vendor to your friends!  Everyone will sell more product when every artist in Second Life is selling through SECONDtunes because fans will be more familiar with the idea from seeing it everywhere.  I’m also starting a “Suggested Features” page that you can leave a comment on with things that you feel would make the experience better for everyone.  Look for that link later this evening.

Thanks again for supporting this project and keep on rocking the virtual world!

Bobby

I’m out on the road in real-life, so updates will be slower and SL appearances fewer.  I noticed some duplicate songs in the database, and it raised (for me) an interesting dillema that I anticipate hearing about from artists:  “How do I delete a song?”

This presents a problem, because if I allow the deletion of songs, it could possibly break the experience for the listener (ie. They purchased the song and haven’t gotten around to downloading it yet and you delete it before they can.)  I want the experience to be as useful, simple, and rewarding as possible for everyone, so the solution I’ve come to is the ability to “Retire” songs.  This will be useful for artists who only want to sell a song for a limited time, or for those who have not purchased a new license for their cover recording.  It will also make an easy fix for “accidents” in the song addition process.

If you retire a song before it has any purchases, I should be able to delete it permanently (so as not to muck up your artist tools page with duplicates).  We’ll deal with that on a case-by-case basis.

I hope that this makes things simpler (yes, that means you, JueL!) and better.  I’ve started working on the ability to create special vendors with only specified songs (rather than your whole library) as well as some alternative ways of accessing the vendor (possibly with a menu system rather than the click-to-change system currently in place).

Also, I changed the welcome message received by new users to (hopefully) make it easier to find their new temporary password and understand that registration is done automatically at the time of purchase.  In the next vendor update we’ll be ditching the free t-shirt in favor of a notecard for new users.

I’ll be working on some code from my laptop when I’m off the stage and not asleep, but it probably won’t be updated until after the weekend.  If anyone has any immediate concerns, please feel free to e-mail me at bobby@bobbyfairweather.com.  You all have a great weekend, and get to selling that music!

We here at SECONDtunes would like to welcome the new artists to the fold!  We’ve added JueL Resistance, Julian Vesta, Ronnie Carr, and Spaceman Opus!  Hopes are high that once the first wave of artists comes in, gets comfortable with the product, and makes suggestions about how their listeners would benefit from changes to the site or the vendor, that we’ll start seeing more and more of the SL music community on board here!  Our goal is to have every performing musician on Second Life with a page here on SECONDtunes, and as many as possible selling their music!

I’ve been asked a lot by artists the details of selling cover versions of songs through SECONDtunes.  The short answer is “Yes, you can, if you acquire the licenses.”  The long answer can be found here: http://www.harryfox.com/public/songfile.jsp.

The summary of what it will cost you as an artist to sell someone else’s song is as follows (assuming that HFA can license it):

• $13-$15 ($US) one-time fee for each song.  This is a processing fee for the agency that does the licensing.
• 9.1 cents per copy sold (minimum of 150 licenses per song can be purchased at a given time)

What this means is that it will cost $28.65 to license 150 downloads of any given song for SECONDtunes.  This is the case with any retailer, and the license you purchase carries to any and all retailers (iTunes, etc.).  You can use the “View Statistics” button in your artist tools to keep up with how many copies have been downloaded, and when you need to re-up your license.  If you anticipate selling more than 150 downloads in a year (which is how long the license is good for) you should go ahead and license how many you expect to sell.  Once it runs out, you hit the $15 processing fee again.

SECONDtunes is not going to require you to submit these licenses currently, but will only accept songs that you mark “Yes, I own or own the license to sell this song” on the “Add Song” dialogue.  Hopefully this will remain the case to reduce the amount of paperwork for everyone, but understand that you may have to produce the license in the event that (1) our policy on this changes or (2) a publisher requests confirmation that the license has been acquired.