3pointD.com

Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, which has nurtured a few of the biggest country and western music stars to emerge in the last 25 years, will start streaming video of its shows into the virtual world of Second Life this evening, 15 May, 3pointD hears. The Bluebird Cafe SL, located in the »Nashville Music City region« of Second Life, replicates the tiny music club in Nashville, and was built out by a firm called Sansoft. The club will apparently be streaming its shows into SL six days a week, beginning tonight with Fred Eaglesmith. This is pretty cool. Most of Second Life’s native musicians who’ve seen the most success are small acts that play intimate venues like the Bluebird. How cool would it be to tie the two types of gig together, so that the venue became a place to see not only emerging talent from Nashville, but emerging talent in a similar vein from Second Life. Who knows, it might even get some SL musicians in front of the ears of the talent scouts lurking at Nashville’s Bluebird.

[UPDATE: One interesting aspect about this project is the fact that the virtual Bluebird will charge an admission charge of between L$1,000 and L$2,500, or about US$3-9. (This information wasn’t apparent until a press release appeared after my earlier post.) Most SL establishments don’t dare charge anything for admission, so it will be interesting to see whether the Bluebird is both brave and shrewd (quite possible) or just foolhardy. The question is, are these acts you’d pay that kind of money to watch on the Web? The SL experience is enhanced, but audiences aren’t used to being asked to pay. This is an experiment to watch, in any case.]