Culture

Lady Wallace Sings - and kills the traditional music industry

by djbatman | December 27, 2008 at 03:13 am

469 views | 17 Recommendations | 5 comments

A little story about an independent music artist promoting herself on the Internet as an example of new digital distribution channels for music artists and the collapse of the traditional music industry.

Full discloure, folks: my opinion on her may be biased. I don’t find myself too often writing about a good friend and also someone I am collaborating with on a few music projects in these terms. But it happens there are some good reasons for my online friend and IMVU avatar Lady Wallace to be in the news.

Lady Wallace (real name Mary Elizabeth Wallace) joined IMVU.com less than two years ago. She wanted to see if that could be of some use to promote her music, just like her MySpace page. A road many other people have taken (me included ;)) since the Internet gave people a chance to express themselves in music and many other fields.

Her first effort happened to be a music track accompained by a 3d video filmed within the virtual world of IMVU (www.imvu.com), which may be defined as a cross between Second Life or something similar to that, and an instant messaging system. You basically chat in public or private rooms with online friends and everyone is represented by a 3d avatar. MSN Messenger made into a videogame, if you prefer.

Just as in second Life, independent “developers” create objects for your avatars and your IMVU page: and copyright for these objects stays with their creators, not IMVU Inc. The company lives mostly selling “credits” (just like Linden Lab and Second Life have their own virtual currency) and thosse can be used to purchase stuff.

Music soon became an important part of the IMVU scene: but 90% of that wouldn’t have been approved by the music industry. They were just bits or entire tracks ripped out of cds amd converted to a format suitable for IMVU: avatars would “wear” visible (or invisible) objects containing the tracks and play those for their friends, maybe enjoying dancing in a club that exists only in cyberspace.

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Paschen

at 03:34 on December 27th, 2008

Interesting concept. IMVU taking over the Music industry or rather causing its end rather then Pirated copies.

jordan

at 07:10 on December 27th, 2008

I remember reading a book called Little Heroes, by Norman Spinrad, that dealt with virtual pop stars. This was around 20 years ago, I think, and, while the story accurately predicted a disconnect between entertainment and physical reality, it failed to predict how accessible that new genre would be to everyday people, and that we wouldn't remain passive consumers.

drrexdexter

at 09:03 on December 27th, 2008

I'm glad someone's finding a way around the "we just want you to get paid for Internet Play of your Songs, but oh by the way, we have to collect $100K before we pay YOU" B.S. the Corporations pulled on "Indie" Musicians and Internet Radio a few years back...you go girl!

Juice t (not verified)

at 07:26 on December 29th, 2008

I don't like it. I don't like the self checkout in the stores either. I want real people and I want to see real people perform or sing. Certainly, someone has to have talent to bring her out. I just want to see and feel the person. It's all about heart. It's not that the industry doesn't have a variety of styles it's that when you want to work in the industry it starts with training inside the biz. Don't sit behind a desk reading a book, get a mentor in the industry who has the career you want to work under them. http://www.recordingconnection.com for people who want to get into the music business in the fast lane.

djbatman

at 07:37 on December 29th, 2008

Self checkout in the stores? What do you mean?

As for the "real people": Lady Wallace is real, despite her will to use a 3d avatar for artistic representation. You can anyway look for her real self in her video "Goodbye" visible on some sites linked within the article, for example.

As for the "mentor in the industry" bit and the "training" I can tell you this artist surely doesn't lack the last one and seems to have the other element in place now, too.

As for the rest, correct me if I'm wrong, your comment seems just spam. ;)