Wagner James Au / New World Notes
Author, strategist, virtual world reporter
recent posts
- Welcome to New World Notes’ 2006-2025 Archive!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
- Top Five Posts Including: Huge Rec Room Layoff & Meta Boots Neal Stephenson Off Facebook (Briefly)
- Four Glorious Second Life Sims to Explore — After Watching Sabina Valeska’s Machinima Tributes to Them!
- Virtual World Usage Stats from S&P Global Market Intelligence — Plus VRChat & Second Life Specifics!
about
Category: Music
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Video by Toxic Menges From Charles Bristol's Metaverse Blues: 87 Year Old Bluesman Becomes Avatar-Based Musician In Second Life (2009): When Charles Bristol was born in 1921, the electric guitar did not exist, and slavery was a living memory still, related to him by grandparents who worked beneath the lash themselves. But as fate would…
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When Caroline Mimbs Nyce of The Atlantic asked how much Taylor Swift is like the Metaverse, the question seemed pretty bizarre at first — but then got us talking about Suzanne Vega performing in Second Life, the first platinum-selling artist to do so in any metaverse platform. While's Vega's appearance did help inspire a rush…
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I just had the most fascinating if totally left field press interview about music in the Metaverse. Which makes this as good a time as any to share this video, depicting one of the more innovative and ambitious metaverse-based music performances I've seen in awhile: Tia Rungray (IRL Japanese musician Takayuki Noami) performing hypnotically ambient…
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Wagner James Au · The Metaverse & Music — Wagner James Au w/Water & Music Starting around 7 minutes in, here's audio from my Twitter Spaces chat last week on the Metaverse and music with Water & Music, a music business research DAO collective, spinning off on this huge research paper they just published on…
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Tomorrow at 11am PT, watch live above or click here to witness in Second Life a pretty intriguing event: Tia Rungray, a Second Life avatar and a "Noise Classical" project by musician Takayuki Noami, is going to improvise live in the Metaverse, in front of two massive cubes in the desert. "[Sculpture] Blue Tsuki's new installation…
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//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js After performing in Second Life during (and because!) of the pandemic lockdown since last year, rising indie pop star Aufwie recently released his first music video shot in Second Life — watch above! Very nicely shot and edited by VRutega, Aufwie's "throw me to the sea" because quite literal in the virtual world. "[The…
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Faith in Persona is a pretty banging experimental pop album with a top-rated track from rising indie artist Keith Rankin aka Giant Claw, and if the album cover seems familiar, there's a very good reason for that: It's drawn directly from works by beloved Second Life-based artist Whiskey Monday (with her full permission of course).…
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Above: Pop star Grimes, who believes reality is a virtual world created by an omniscient AI, explains how Alter Ego works Months after its producers began scouting among the Second Life community for avatar-based performers, the avatar-based reality competition show Alter Ego is here: Watch on Fox TV's site. I just saw the first episode…
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"Polygon Sea" is a rocking, Radiohead-ish new track (recently featured on the BBC!) by Alien Alarms, the one-man band fronted by Jim Purbrick. (Disclosure: A buddy from way back in our Linden days.) It's inspired, Jim tells me, by "Radiohead's 'Pyramid Song', the billionaire space race and the Second Life residents who used to ask…
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I've caught countless live music performances streamed into Second Life over the years, but performer Katica Pajic (Katiaportugal.genesis in SL) has a fresh new twist that I haven't seen before: While performing in SL, she also streams her computer display/webcam feed on Facebook and YouTube. That way, you not only get to watch the virtual…
Wagner James Au / New World Notes 