Numerous platforms for the online presentation of music currently exist and many companies seek to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the digitisation of the music industry. These include a vast range of music and video streaming sites with varying degrees of social media capabilities, marketing, and sales functions inbuilt. Examples include YouTube, Spotify, Last.fm, Soundcloud, Grooveshark, Gogoyoko and Myspace. Major record labels and the artists represented by these labels feature prominently on these sites. Online virtual worlds such as Second Life (SL) currently present a less popular means for artists to present their music to a global Internet audience. After a brief flurry of activity in 2006 - 07, major artists and labels have not pursued activities in SL. However, as Rogers (2012) and Gagen (2012) document, the live music performance scene in SL is vibrant, with performances in a range of music genres occurring on a daily basis. This paper seeks to explore the online communities that have emerged around the live SL performance scene by examining the experiences of both performers and audience members from regional and metropolitan areas in Australia who have participated in these performances.
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