Minimum essential equipment for a music venue

Picking brains again :-

I'm planning a venue for African music in SL. Not a glossy club, but a space which can be used by group members to organise their own PG events when they want to.

So I'm wondering what would be the practical minimum set of equipment would be - the essentials.

This is my first list :-

* modest stage rig
* lighting
* dance ball
* donation jar
* audio stream server
* DJ console
* LM and notecard giver
* something that looks like a bar with seating

How does that look to you? Sensible?
Can anyone recommend products they *know* are good value?

I have a provisional budget of L25,000 (assuming that land costs such, as rent/tier etc, come from some other source). Is that realistic?

(BTW, there is no business plan: we assume right from the start that there is no money to be made from this project, and we are not even going to try).

Add to that a few couples dances, and a dance floor.

And yes your costs are reasonably realistic.

Some things you can get as freebies, others you will have to pay in either lindens (for inworld stuff) or in US$ (or your local currency) - shoutcast server etc.

You might also want to provide tip jars for performers, where the house gets a cut of the tips (10% TO 20% is common). I heartily recommend the one I sell:

http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=161174

(Use the script in any jars.)

I sell an inexpensive dance ball as well:

[/url]http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=334341[/url]

Also, if you want free, low-prim stage equipment for a blues/rock band, look here:

http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=334380

If you're willing to get some constructive criticism on that list, I'll offer you the benefit of my (roughly) year of club ownership in SL and (roughly) 15 months of venue-attendance in SL.

OK, from a "Let's all do our part to keep the lag down and the venue friendly" standpoint, let's go through these one-by-one...


Define "modest" - all you really need is a platform. The key to building in SL is to minimize the number and size of textures you use - as well as the number of prims. You don't need a huge stage, scrolling textures, "speakers", etc. Scrolling textures will EAT your FPS faster than almost anything.


Urgh. If by this you mean rotating "cans" that shoot "beams" of "light" across the crowd, please don't. For one, more motion = more lag. For two, if I try to select an avatar, tip jar, donation box, whatever, across a room filled with expensive light rigs, odds are I'm going to get a partially-alpha'd light-beam instead. Lighting should be transparent phantom prims, small as possible, positioned to provide ambient light at the appropriate places in the venue. No scripting or physics needed.


These are obvious requirements. However, if you're on an estate and have privs or know someone who does, make sure you check your dance ball for script time - some of them get quite laggy, especially rotating ones.


Naturally. If this is a part-time venue, you're probably better off renting one by the hour, rather than by the month - all depends on how much you'll be using it.


One word: "Why?" If you want your DJ in a fixed spot, I guess, go right ahead - or, save prims (and possibly animated textures) by telling him/her to hang out by his/her tip jar. As long as they have an appropriate group title, though, I don't see why people always want to sequester their DJs (unless clicking to IM them is impossible, see "lighting". Also, remember anything with scrolling or animated textures is going to add some serious client-side lag to any visitor.


Yes, but don't make it obtrusive. Make it a "click for" rather than an auto-giver - for one, you're saving tons of script resources, and for two, you won't annoy your repeat guests by making them decline a something every time they walk into the place.


Yes, but in moderation. Most people won't sit, they'll dance. If you do put in seating, remember the magic number - 20m - if you want the "sitters" to have /some/ privacy, put them more than 20m away from the dance floor, otherwise, make sure they're closer.


(shameless plug) I make a very nice scripted stage security system, keeps people from hopping the stage and annoying the performers. Just check my profile picks.(/shameless plug)


GOOD. There are too many clubs out there already that are doing their best to try to make a ton of L$ - and frankly, 99.999% of them are empty. People would rather go where they don't feel the pressure to spend, spend, spend. If you're a good place, and you luck onto the right VIPs (don't count on it, but it's nice when it happens), you might break even. Otherwise, it will be a money pit.

But then again, every hobby is, isn't it?

Awesome advice, Buckaroo! I'd say THE most important thing is to keep lag as low as humanly possible. Ditch the lights, the moving textures, all the objects that people's computers will have to rez. Keep the dance ball, throw some couples dance poseballs in there, and you're good. You want people to have a good time, not stand around waiting to be able to see. Maybe you could put out some couches and comfy chairs with poses for those who don't want to dance.

The DJ doesn't need a booth... one of my favorite places to dance at just has a DJ that stands and dances in one place, next to her tip jar, so you always know where she is. She doesn't have any fancy "equipment;" she just spins awesome tunes.

Are animated textures really that laggy? I just tried testing this by turning off animated textures via the client menu and saw no change in my framerate at all. I've never heard this before.

As a the owner of a small, not for profit club, I agree with Buckaroo on everything except one . I had a bar at my first club, and it was so rarely used that I don't even have that in my club.

One other thing I have and people really like: a schedule. They can click on a board and get a whole month's schedule in advance.

As far as music stream, see if the performers don't already have one. Most do, and it would save you quite a bit of money.

Given that the original poster said this wasn't a for-profit venture, it makes more sense to allow the DJ or performers to set out their own tip jars, with no cut for the house. Alternatively, don't allow any tipping.

That doesn't follow. Not for profit doesn't mean zero revenue.

Excellent points, Buckaroo. I've never owned or operated a club, but as a patron I agree 100%

Concnerning lag, keep in mind that physics/display lag is separate from script lag. Laggy scripts are bad but won't cause a low frame rate, despite what a lot of people think.

Laggy scripts cause other scripts to lag: poseballs will be slow in kicking in, doors won't respond quickly, etc. They might also cause chat lag; one of these days I'll try to test that. But they won't cause a slow frame rate.

Too many textures make rezzing slower when you jump in. After they're all loaded (provided folks' caches are big enough) it won't affect much -- but definitely try to limit the number of textures.

Prim count is the biggest contributor to low frame rate, but a couple dozen avs with 100+ prim hair (especially floaty) will turn a real low-prim build into a high-prim one. Not much we can do about that. Still, don't be silly with prims -- leave a big margin.

And I hate lighting that obscures what I'm trying to look at and keeps me from clicking on someone/something.

Actually, I misspoke a touch. Scrolling textures aren't necessarily that laggy - although they do cause a measurable, but not terribly noticeable, impact on FPS when overused. What I meant to say was "animated" textures - meaning prims that change texture every few seconds (or, Eris help us, several times a second) - flashing signs, "speakers" that appear to move in & out, etc. Even after the multiple textures are cached, it does take time for them to be moved in & out of your video card's memory - which will most likely be taken up by baked avatar textures and all the other pretty stuff - and the scripts that make the textures animate will take up sim resources as well. There is actually a low(er)-lag way to do this - a single texture with more than one "state" stacked side-by-side, set to rotate in large jumps - but I don't know that anyone actually uses that hack.

This is a kind of gateway test of the graphics card. If fully loaded animated textures have any effect at all on the client frame rate, it's a truly crappy graphics card. (Pretty much the same with particles, by the way: if the client can't handle 4096 particles without any impact to frame rate, it's time for new hardware.) Most of the time I'm stuck using 3 to 5 year old GPUs; recently got a quite modest new card for one of my machines: what a difference!

But club owners have to cater to folks with all kinds of crappy hardware, so it's not bad advice to "dumb down" the graphics as much as possible.

As for the clickable light beam problem... yeah, this is a big deal for me, too. But recently I found myself furnishing a danceclub that needed all the help it could get to look like a club. So I made gradient texture light beam particles. Of course, as particles, they maintain screen orientation regardless of cam position, so they look very strange when you cam up to the level where they're being emitted... and as particles, they're limited in size (to minimize the first effect, only the bottom half of the texture gets used, so only about 2m is visible). But at least they can't get in the way of the mouse.

Of course, if trying to minimize graphics lag, even these very infrequently emitted particles would be a step in the wrong direction.

Oh, definitely! If anybody is doing anything other than "stepwise" texture animation for speakers, for example, they're simply doing it *wrong*! Animated textures are purely client-side: the script doesn't need to remain in the prim once the animation is set. But they *can* still affect viewer lag for clients with Crappy(TM) graphics cards (see previous post).

How necessary is a dance floor?
Isn't a clickable dance ball enough?
Most dance floors I have seen have scripted lighting coming from below (something I find personally disconcerting), but don't contribute anything else to the venue ambience.

Thanks for all the great advice so far!
Especially the advice about design that I had not even asked yet.


Thanks Buckaroo.
This is about *spatial* design -- obviously *so* important, but I had not even thought about it until now.
The overall venue design has to incorporate visual, spatial and functional aspects - and I guess should also be easy to modify.
I think we need an open-air venue. We don't need a roof because it never rains in SL. I don't see why we would need walls either - they interfere with avatar cameras.

Yet another helpful revelation:

*Now* I understand why builds that other people say are awesome sometimes don't work for me at all. Most of my time in SL is when I am at work in RL - using a business PC with a fast Internet connection but a crap graphics card. I'm part of the SL lowest common denominator.

ROFL - the first essential requirement for music events is good music and a good crowd (includes those with low spec PCs), the rest is just eye candy..., well, maybe some of the crowd are eye candy too !

~Snowman~

I don't understand this, a waste of $ or L IMO.

If you have a reasonable broadband connection (no less then 1.5meg/256k) you can run your own streaming server. I use JetCast (part of the JetAudio player package) to do such but you could use others (freeware) such as shoutcast or icecast. Renting a streaming server is such a waste of time/money when you can easily setup the same on your desktop to stream to the SL area in question. also gives you full control of the server/player to DJ

Something to consider if you or your staff want to DJ themselves without spending the lindens for a outside DJ.

Re: Dance floor... I'd say no, you don't need a special one with bells and whistles. Just make sure you have a nice big space for people to dance in.

I don't understand how this works. I thought the streams went from the streaming host (in this model, your own computer) to each recipient, so even if you turned off SL and any other competition for bandwidth, the 256K upstream would only support maybe at most a dozen low-end audio streams. What am I missing?

Re: DJ Booth. As a patron, I want to know where the DJ is so I can tip, send an IM, give them my phone number or whatever. That said, simple is better. The goal is to know where the DJ is and be able to right-click, not hide them behind large glass panels and animated objects.

Re: Dance floor. My favorite places have simple dance floors. For one they don't mess up my invisi-prim boots and shoes like the fancy ones. For another, I simply find the lighted floors and such to be a distraction.

Re: Bar and/or seating area. This is really more of a venue thing. At rock clubs I just find an open place on the floor and start dancing. I don't find the need to sit at these places. Jazz clubs, however, I like to have a place to sit or wait while I look for a dance partner. I am not familiar with African music so I don't know if it is more of a group thing or couples oriented.

You only send one stream to the SL servers, they then distribute the stream to the various clients on their bandwidth. The SL clients are not direct connecting to your server, the SL server (that manages the area in question) is.

Ok, maybe we don't need an audio stream of our own!

I think this would be a better idea: install a radio or jukebox with presets to our favourite Internet radio URLs, and allow event organisers to select streams.

I noticed these examples on slexchange:

a. Internet Radio Jukebox
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=382253

b. Internet Radio
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=297701

c. Raster Radio
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=47826

Well, I think land radio might be a good option for a not-for-profit club, especially if you have a set of favorite URLs already. And if you do, you don't really need much of a radio; you could embed a freebie radio script in any handy prim and call it a radio. But a couple of these also connect to an external server that searches for live streams according to criteria, and they all have bells and whistles that a freebie script won't have. And they're like L$500, so hardly worth worrying about the cost if they do something you like.

As for the stream server thing... I hate to keep carping on this, but https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Streaming_Music gives some advice about (not) streaming from a typical cable or DSL connection, and https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=3987 notes "Please keep in mind that the audio streams come directly to your Second Life viewer, they do not get streamed by Linden Lab's servers. None of this content comes via Linden Lab's servers at all, so performance issues with streams are completely outside of Linden Lab's control. " So... at least I'm not the only one who thinks streaming follows that model.

This is the "voice" feature... the audio streaming operates with quicktime pluging and the clients aren's connected to any "SL server", they are connected *directly* to "your" server (setup via parcel media setting). So if you stream from your PC anyone listening the streaming audio will connect to *YOUR* PC. You'll stream to 5-6 users with 256k ...consider that even the kbits setting on your stream is also relevant (the audio quality is noticiable... and you "must" go for the 44Khz). So unless you have a SDSL or fiber you cannot stream yourself, and you must use a streaming server (that operates as you described.. you upload to the server, and anyone will connect to that server... but it is *external* to SL).