THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF STREAMING

Since Version 1.4, flying over private land has become a little like driving through a neighborhood where everyone has their stereo out on the lawn, cranked up full. This is, as far as I can tell, an unintended consequence to the most popular feature in 1.4—the ability to stream Internet audio, especially music, onto your plot of land. Pretty much every active property owner uses it now, it seems like, so even flying a short distance, you’re likely to get hit with a different blast of sterephonics, every few dozen meters. (Fortunately for neighbors’ peace of mind, you can only hear a given stream when you’re standing on its assigned plot, or positioned directly in its airspace.) Recently flying back to my land from a sim away, I cut through a burst of techno, then a twang of country music, followed by a mullet-inducing boom of 80’s rock hits (when’s the last time I’ve heard Corey Heart, for god’s sake?!), then country again, then 70’s pop classics, and finally back to home, sweet drum-and-bass home. All within the space of a minute.

So musical taste becomes another means of shaping your online identity, and reaching out to those who share it. (I got turned on to my own drum n’ bass stream after a chat with Zoe Jade at her waterfront home, where she plays the same cool beats.)

It occurs to me that there’s another unintended consequence at work here: instant demographic identification. Because you can make a fairly educated guess at the real life age and regional background of a resident, based on their music taste. Someone who, say, listens to techno tends to be quite predictably different from someone into New Age, as opposed to country, as opposed to R&B, and so on. And sometimes, you even get a pretty good gauge for guessing gender—if you fly past a plot streaming hardcore heavy metal, for instance, the smart money says the resident is a guy (and in his 20’s). Sometimes, regional origin or ethnicity is a dead giveaway, as when the streaming DJ comes on, and he’s speaking Spanish, or he’s interrupted by British commercials.

Some academics have been trying to figure out the real world demographics of the residents in Second Life, breaking it down by age, gender, and so on. But because of Linden Lab’s confidentiality policies, the only way to do this so far is by conducting voluntary polls. Maybe a more fruitful method is to count the kinds of music streams one hears, and divide them according to genre, and assume the demographic preferences of each. Maybe that’s the better way to get an accurate picture, of who's in the world. Because while people like to roleplay and pretend to be things they’re not, in here, one thing they don’t seem to fake, ever, is the music they love.