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Cybertown's 1999 4th of July
Music Concert Cybertown, at www.cybertown.com,
is known as the Sci-fi Community of the Future. They recently honored
their American citizens by celebrating the American 4th of July starting
in the late afternoon of July 2nd
and ending The secondary reason for the festival was to experiment with an idea to showcase the music of individual musicians and bands throughout Cybertown. They called them Musician Avatars and said they would be available for everyone's listening pleasure. As with many experimental Internet events, the Cybertown staff didn't know how it would actually turn out, but it sounded like a great idea and they were going to do their best to pull it off. Musicians were asked
to fill out a form describing their music. They were then presented with
a gallery of animated musician avatars, courtesy of Geometrek, to choose
from and a text box to include the address of their RealAudio streaming file. They also Musician Len Bullard commented after the event, "Simply being able to show up at such an online event, meet people, play my music, and never leave the house, is really quite a step forward. If you know what is involved in getting music played in any medium, much less getting it on a world stage, you know where this is going: it didn't cost me a dime!! Free RA G2 Producer and Player, Free Blaxxun Contact, free membership to Cybertown. Hooorah!!!"
Carole Sumler, Cybertown's Community Operations Manager noted, "Even
with the short notice, we got more submissions then we imagined we would.
Many musicians already knew how to use RealAudio files and went
on without a hitch. Tony Rockliff, a founder of Cybertown also performed at the event. A lot of music got heard and overall Cybertown's "experiment" was a success! Keep your ears tuned for another music concert coming to Cybertown soon. In the meantime, Bastille Day is on July 14th and everyone is invited to celebrate in Cybertown and Virtual Paris!  |
in
the wee hours of July 5th. One of the reasons for the extended length
of festivities was to provide 24-hour access for a cultural exchange between
the two blaxxun universes of Cybertown
and Virtual Paris. A portal between the two virtual cities provided a
nice flow of additional international visitors 24 hours a day for the
event. Fireworks went off every half-hour in the Fun Park, while B-B-Q
grill avatars served virtual food anytime you clicked. 
got
to pick a 3-hour time frame in the location of their choice (City Hall,
City Cafe or Teenz Town). What that meant was that the musician, in avatar
form, had to show up on time and on location so that their music would
be available for 3 hours for anyone in Cybertown to listen to. It was
very much like a "real life" gig with the extra and phenomenal advantage
of allowing the musician to talk to the audience as they listened to the
music.
The
music schedule was posted in the Cybertown Daily News and updated as more
musicians were accepted to play in the family-oriented environment. Any
individual who wanted to listen to music would click on the musician avatar,
which launched the G2 player for them. 
Some musicians were new to the whole experience of
3D, chat and streaming RealAudio and needed help every step of the way. And some needed us to host their RealAudio files."