An amateur musician, I’ve always wanted to play in a band. Practical, time-consuming considerations like school, income generation and then fatherhood got in the way — in a good way, of course.

How ironic, the coronavirus lockdown gave me the time to form a band, but potential band members were also locked down and there was no place to play live.

So, I formed a virtual band: five avatars performing under the name Stalign.

Stalign performed for real people represented by their avatars in Second Life. Second Life is the largest user-created online virtual 3D world with about one million subscribers. In it’s heyday, bands like Duran Duran, ELO and Suzanne Vega streamed live music into Second Life’s virtual nightclubs. A result of the lockdown, Second Life, like many other forms of online entertainment, experienced a threefold increase in player activity.

The band’s original music wasn’t restricted to Second Life. Stalign has a Sound Click account. Sound Click is an online, music-based social community with 4.5 million registered members (real people). About 530,000 bands and artists have uploaded/posted almost 5 million songs in categories such as instrumental, jazz, hip hop, EDM, rock, metal, classical and blues. As of 12-2023, Stalign has had seven number one songs in their respective genres: Jazz, World, Synthpop and Film Music.

Here is the EDM/Rock fusion song ‘Street People’:

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