Context
This post was originally written as a Twitlonger in June of 2021 as a response to heated discussions around the value of having well funded industry folks enter the VR live music scene, specifically VRChat.
disclaimer: It is 5am and I am operating on 3.5 hours of sleep. If I've made any historical errors, I apologize.
added disclaimer: I'm not going to take a side in this post. That's okay, I hope you read so you can understand why!
There has been a lot of uhhhh... discourse, today, about Muzz (in a really tangential way honestly), and what the presence of "labels" and "AAA money" mean to "the scene". It's mostly people talking past each other, using Muzzfest as an excuse to gesture in rudimentary 250 character tweets at problems and differences of core-principles that are much much larger than 250 characters.
VRChat, and the metaverse at large is, mostly, post-scarcity. This means that it costs zero dollars to make a world, upload it, hit up some people on discord, and show up. You can do it as often or as little as you want and you eat no monetary or physical cost either way for doing so. Your rent never goes up, nobody can take your bookings, there aren't 300 wannabe EDM DJs competing for the same 5 popular clubs. Anyone, at any time, can start their own venue, book people they like, and throw a show or two for their friends. The ethereal landscape of VRChat, NEOS, and Wave (RIP), is littered with the remains of projects like this, started in a flurry of energy, and thrown away just as easily when the group moves on. Occasionally something with real legs forms, first in 2018/19 with DDVR, Ghost Club, Dirty Dancers, Elysium. Many of these live on, in vastly different forms. Some don't, and their staff have gone on to start their own projects, like Rizumu (which I am obviously very fond of).
Zero of these older clubs had ever booked an act that anyone would call "big", until very recently. Most of them were played by people who did small time IRL gigs before VRC. Eventually, many of the DJs (and attendees) were people who found electronic music events for the first time via the VRC community. This generated a self-sustaining scene that lives on to this day.
More recently some clubs run by people who are more well connected to their respective IRL scenes have cropped up, and larger names have started showing up. There are some new groups, booking surprisingly dense lineups, if "dense" means lineups with a lot of Twitter followers between them. This is also okay, some people want that over the more grassroots energy of the older groups. In fact, some of these newer groups (Shelter, Loner come to mind) are very aware of their position, and are often in VR specifically to escape the backstabbing and numbers game of the wider EDM industry. They are here for a more free space, to make art. They are, to put it bluntly, true believers.
So... The stage is set, all the players are here. Two groups, one who is underground because they _want_ to be, and one who is underground because (in their minds) they _aren't big yet_. (and a whole bunch of people who aren't thinking about it nearly that hard)
In the physical space, this dichotomy usually results in the side with more money winning, and obviously the side who cares more about money will probably have more of it. They buy clubs, the rent goes up due to entirely external market forces, and the DJs, clubs, and other talent that can draw the most eyeballs are the last man standing, relegating the other group to obscurity. I would argue that the other group should care more about each other and less about obscurity, but that's beside the point.
THIS IS NOT THE PHYSICAL SPACE. I am talking to you, person who is mad and scared that labels are going to "take over". This place has different rules. You don't pay rent, you don't need a building, you don't need permits, there are no noise complaints (except from your downstairs neighbors when you're cracked out dancing at 7am at Ghost Club). Nobody can convince your sponsors to drop you if you don't have them because you don't need them. Nobody can offer your landlord more money to not renew your lease. Nobody can lobby city council to shut you down for being "bad for the community".
There is infinite space to build here, and an ever increasing number of people who are looking for energy that they resonate with. If you build a unique energy that you enjoy and throw that out into the ether, people who also enjoy that energy will see you, they will show up, you'll be friends, and you'll make beautiful art together. I know this because I've been doing it for 4 years.
If you don't like what you see, go build something. Place the energy into the world that you want to get back.
FOCUS ON WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL