There is a great deal of discussion going on in various blogs and forums at the moment regarding the subject of audience numbers and whether they are dropping.

When I have time off and go around SL enjoying the music that is available it certainly does appear to be the case that numbers are down. I seem to be lucky in that my own shows have stayed the same regarding numbers. I have normally drawn between 20 and 30 to my shows and that seems to still be the same. There is the occasional poorly attended one and the occasional packed sim but on the whole I have had the same numbers if not slightly more. I have never really done any metrics on this. I have the Mystitool which is packed full of gizmos and I expect one of them would give me an accurate number of unique avatars and how long they were around. I'be never really used it to it's full extent so I'll take a look sometime. Then again maybe I won't. The main thing is that enough people come and we have a good time. I never felt the need to discuss numbers while I listened to folks boasting of their sim splitting audiences and I don't see any need now. I had to laugh recently when I saw someone who always boasted that they play to packed sims every time recently say their audiences have gone up! I

So what is causing numbers to be depressed elsewhere? If you surf this subject you will find a huge number of musings spread all over the net. I think it does stand up to some discussion and one of the healthy things about the SL music scene is that it can be galvanised on occasions to achieve something. Personally I think we should just keep on doing what we are doing and the market will come to its own conclusion as to whether there is a future in this kind of online performance. My gut feeling is definitely yes and if there is any reduction in numbers its because during a world wide recession then leisure time gets squeezed. If you are having a tough time making ends meet then you are more likely to spend time ebaying stuff you found in the attic rather than messing about on SL. If you are in SL then you are more likely to be spending you SL time on business projects than leisure projects.

One awkward thing about the debate is that it has become fragmented across a whole load of individual blogs. Blogs are great for getting your own feelings across and perhaps entertaining a couple of comments but they are useless for hosting any worthwhile debate as they disperse the interest across multiple locations and result in people have to wade through alot of extraneous information in order to find the salient points. There is the perfect tool already available for this kind of discussion at the Second Life Music Community Forum ( http://slmc.myfastforum.org/  ) . It seems crazy to me that people don't see it that way, as the most obviously productive tool for topics such as this.     

OK so that's an uncharacteristically grand title for how I am feeling right now. I am away from home and in these moments alone I think about what my life would be like if everything were perfect for me.

Much of it is perfect. I have a wonderful family and I actually enjoy my day job but the inevitable conclusion I always reach is that I wish I had more time to do music and that I wish I could scrape enough of a living from it. I have spent so long doing a day job in the hope that one day I would be secure financially and that that would allow me to explore whatever I wanted to do with music. I now find that as I get older then responsibilities grow and the treadmill I am on always seems to keep edging a little faster and faster so that when the day comes that I am ready to jump off of it then I'll be worried that I might fall and break something essential I use often.....like a leg or a laptop.

Yet these vague but persistant dreams will never come to fruition unless I start planning to make them happen and to my mind that means setting small achievable goals. Whether I will plot all my goals on this blog is not a definite but I will put a few here in the spirit that by throwing them into the open (albeit seldom scrutinized) then I may be better motivated to make them happen.

So in a rough order I really ought to...

- get the album finished so it can be sold in a virtual environment. It shouldn't be difficult to do and it's mad that I have had periods of apathy on something that is this important. I have a willing pal in Toby who has helped me enormously and it is very close to being done

- get a better microphone

- finish some of the 2 dozen half finished songs I have knocking around

- write more songs, I have been in a period of not writing much for about 4 months and I am now experiencing lots of ideas for new material and I must get this written and recorded

- learn more about studio work (this one actually stands a little more explanation. I have been around music, writing, recording and performing for large portions of my life but I have always been a more creative prescence who needed a grounded do-er alongside me to make the technical things happen. I sometimes scare myself when I really think about how little I pick up and retain about the technical side of studio work. I know why it is. It is because my brain works in a funny way in that it does not retain the things its not interested in. In fact my memory is pretty bad all round come to think about it but it's borderline nuts that I have stayed clear of gaining a better understanding of what would be so useful to me. I am building a studio after all and while I know the basics it will soon not be enough to skate along just on that)

- look at other ways of getting music out there digitally. It appears that a well chosen cover version on youtube gets a crazy amount of views and that could open up a better route to my own songs

- go to bed...move this one to the top of the list...goodnight!