Crap Mariner is a pretty unique individual. It's not often that the words "incredibly abrasive" and "big hearted" get combined in the same person, in equal measure. Crap can say things that, coming from anyone else's mouth, might get him punched in the nose. But it's the fact that there's no doubt that Crap has the best interest of the community at heart when he goes off on a rant that makes it not only okay, but you actually find yourself nodding in agreement. And besides, he's a guy who named himself Crap. You have to know there's some dichotomy of personality going on there.
One indication of Crap's positive energy is his willingness to step up and put time and effort into projects from which he gets no direct personal benefit. I've seen this time and time again with him. One such project which he began about a year ago and is really starting to coalesce is called Tunes inSL. The long story short is that as we approached the holiday season of 2009, Crap had the realization that many people were getting gift cards for iTunes and similar retail download services, but that few of them were aware that a good number of Second Life artists had music for sale. Even in the cases where people knew the artists had music for sale, there was certainly no centralized place where people could peruse SL artists and find something cool.
Enter Tunes inSL. Not only can you scroll through dozens of SL artists and find links to their music for sale, but Crap has expanded the listings to include complete bios, links to the artists' websites, social networks, and more. A typical listing, such as that for musician Grace McDunnough, includes a link to her in-world group as well as links to her profiles on thesixtyone.com, Avatars United, two blogs, a Google calendar for her show schedule, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, an SLURL to her home base in world, a Twitter feed, two web sites, and a YouTube channel. Whew!
In any case, as Crap certainly recognized by seeing the need to create Tunes inSL, there is a vibrant music scene in Second Life, and it's one of the only aspects of SL that makes it unique among virtual worlds. If you've spent any time hopping around live music shows in world and are interested in what these artists have to offer beyond what you've heard in their live shows, do check out Tunes inSL. I mean, it's also got the world's best URL at http://riaa.isfullofcrap.com/, so that's enough reason to click right there, don'tcha think?
Oh, one more thing: if you're an SL artist and haven't sent Crap an updated listing for your information on Tunes in SL, what the hell are you waiting for? It's free, it's a place where you can be recognized among your SL peers, and maybe you can even sell a few songs to folks who love the SL music scene. And besides, other than filling out your bio info, Crap does all the work. What's not to like? Drop him an email at tunesinsl (at) isfullofcrap.com, and include as much of the the following info as you can:
SL Name
RL Name (optional)
SL Group Name
Subscribeomatic RSS
Mailing List
Amazon
Bandcamp
Cdbaby
Emusic
iLike
iTunes
Lala
Tunecore
Soundclick
Direct order URL
61
AvaLine
Blog
Flickr user/groups
Google calendar
Last.fm
Myspace
Plurk
Reverbnation
SLURL to home/info center
UStream
Uvumi
Virb
Website
Youtube channel
250 word bio
Manager/Booking agent
Genres of music
Instruments (or vocal only)
Three musicians that people say your music is like
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