Capital Music Group (CMG, owned by EMI), is rolling out the red carpet at The Tower, its new virtual nightclub setting up shop in There.com, where users can listen to its artists' music, see virtual performances, and meet the artists themselves. The long-term aim is to actually sell music through kiosks in the nightclub that link to online stores.

CMG will start by promoting five artists on There.com: The Beastie Boys, Korn,Yellowcard, Lily Allen and Mims-- the latter will give the first concert in The Tower on July 10th.

"It's an opportunity to see if this is a really good opportunity for merchandise to be sold," said Syd Schwartz, Senior VP of digital strategy at CMG. "Like anywhere on the Web, you have to make it one click away. If you have the Beastie Boys in chat, why wouldn't you have [their album] one click away?"

While There.com, which also runs MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach, only claims about 1 million registered users as opposed to Second Life's 7 million, it was attractive to CMG because of prime positioning-- users will receive info and announcements about The Tower when logging on, and well-positioned real estate will make it easy to find.

Schwartz wouldn't estimate how many people they expected to have at the Tower's first concert, but said: "If you have several hundred or several thousand people, you've got a successful event. When's the last party you went to that had several hundred people that sucked?"

[via AdWeek]