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For a talk i gave at the EMMA Forum 2002 i collected some links and comments people might find useful.
The net is full of communities, but music communities have been talked about the most. First, the idea of the net label promises to musicians that they will not need greedy record labels anymore; they want use the net for promotion and distribution, without having to fit into a format. Further, music communities are known to use net technologies in a more advanced fashion than other communities, as style and personality, not only functionality, are of course an important factor.
MP3.com was amongst the first to provide musicians with facilities to present themselves and upload their material for others to download, stream or burning on CDs. It features loads of things that look useful, like charts, several systems to give money to artists, CD burning serviced and so on. — Also it features loads of things that really do not help: A revolting signing-up procedure for listeners, a gazillion categories (explore them from the main charts page), questionable terms and conditions and uniform page layouts (compare Rancid Golem and Madonna, only different images). Plus MP3.com is very slow: Each uploaded song will be checked for samples by real humans … so until a song really appears on the site weeks can pass.
Also MP3.com doesn’t work a lot different from the traditional real-world distribution schemes the musicians try to escape. According to for example Simon V, who uses MP3.com mainly to store his music files and to pay for the hosting of his official site, it is impossible to get a decent amount of downloads without being in a MP3.com feature programme. So if musicians are not promoted by MP3.com like by a record company, nothing special will happen to their popularity.
Most musicians that leave or never ever cooperate with MP3.com are not satisfied with the way they are stuffed together with other artists without being able to make a difference in the template world of the MP3.com servers or because of the conditions MP3.com imposes on musicians. The net label Tokyo Dawn has written a statement on why they left MP3.com.
Many other net labels like monotonik, Metempsychosis or The 8 Bit Peoples just set up their own servers, store their files there and use the full possibilities of web design to create their own image.
And again like in the »real world« net labels decide what music they will release and what musicians they will allow amongst them. Basically being a net label reduces distribution costs. The 8 Bit Peoples even make record covers for MP3 files and albums and give them a regulary release number. Seems to be more satisfying and productive than residing somewhere inside the 3rd level MP3.com categories together with heaps of not related tunes.
Company-side, what survives are community tools that are able to integrate, like Yahoo! mailing lists, which is used by many net labels to annouce new releases or to talk behind the scenes. Monolithic services that try to converge everything towards themselves will never be able to deliver the same personality hand-made customized sites have which can use a variety of mixed guestbooks, mailingslists, weblogs or feedback software.
Long before the MP3 file format, the Soundtracker, a music software first seen on Commodore Amiga computers, allowed the creation and sharing of music in very small file sizes. (Documentation is available at the Karsten Obarski Tribute Project which is at the moment offline, so google it up!) Unlikely a MP3 file a soundtracker file does not contain for example 3 minutes stereo audio data. Instead there are basically little bits of sound and information on when in the timeline on what output channel to play them. Starting with 8 bit quality sounds and only 4 output channels in the 80s, today’s soundtracker programs can be compared with the most expesive hardware samplers. Only that the soundtrackers are available for free and their timimg has always been unparalleled in accuracy.
Though there are a lot of different soundtrackers available (see Maz Sound) they are compatible to each other to a very large extend. Tunes made for one soundtracker can usually be played in any other soundtracker. And more than this: As a soundtracker tune comes with all the sounds and sequencing information saved in the file, it is basically music that comes with its source. Musicians that distribute their files in a soundtracker file format allow anybody to have a look inside their composing tricks. This makes the soundtracker community very technically aware and also open and helpful. Instruction on how to use soundtrackers basically are still valid from the times of the Commodore Amiga, musicians can build upon 15 years of experience. A lot of web sites explain how to track, offer samples for downloading and forums for questions.
Star musicians in the soundtracker community like Jester are mostly generated from being into soundtracking for a very long time (skill is important) and preferably by composing the soundtrack for successful demos. Demos are programs that are developed by teams of programmers, graphic artists and musicians who try to find new audiovisual effects to be done with home computers. Typically these works are submitted to competitions at demo parties. — Though the soundtracker musicians have started to release their tunes without being tied to the release of a new demo, being in a demo still helps a lot. It is like having a song on music television instead of only on the radio.
Around 1999 (documentation about this is still very incomplete) a new generation of trackers appeared: First Jeskola Buzz, shortly followed by Psycle. Both use the idea of the soundtracker interface and allow the use of software synthesizers modules and effects, which enables them to use the processing powers of today’s home computers to produce extremely rich sounds. And again both programs can be downloaded and used at no cost. But the slight differences in handling the program code and the personalities of the creators led to different communities building around them.
As Buzz was the first on the scene a lot of people started using it right away. Strangely enough, the group Jeskola very quickly removed Buzz-related material from their site and instead linked to the growing site buzzmachines which was originally dedicated to listing the latest software synthesizer modules for Buzz. Oskari, the creator of Buzz, never made it a secret that all the users of Buzz with their questions and requests are getting on his nerves. He announced the loss of the source code to Buzz due to a harddisk crash — many users suspect that he just wanted to be left in peace.
Buzz’ program code was never released to the public so Oskari has full control over it. Together with his secluded appearance this makes him the star of the Buzz community, the top of the hierarchy. He is without a doubt a programming genius and the relation between the users and him seem to be dominated by admiration and hate at the same time. In what direction Buzz will go or if it ever will develop lays in his hands. Only the documentation of how to write more synthesizers for the Buzz architecture is open.
The coders of the software synthesizers that can be plugged into Buzz have the second most influence: Only the machines they decide to write can be used by the musicians.
The actual musicians in the Buzz community sit at the lowest position. They are largely depending on what Oskari and the synthesizer developers do. It seems hard for them to find a common ground as the Buzz system is so complex and can be used in so many ways that it is difficult to unite or agree on something. The mailinglist Buzz Jam was started by musicians to exchange Buzz files and work on tunes collectively. The spongy wealth of options in Buzz leads to many of these jams just being cancelled.
Psycle started in the year 2000 and was created by Arguru who has a quite impressive music software output. (He also wrote Aodix, TraxVox, Modix, FreeBase VST, now he is developing Overdose.) As a second mover and due to instabilities in the first versions, Psycle never became as popular as Buzz and has not as many sythesizers developers contributing to it. But as Arguru is doing a lot of programs and always wants to move on he decided to release the source code of Psycle to the public. Now other programmers go on with his work. The Psycle Community is relatively small and programmers and musicians are working together. Funny is that most Psycle tunes that are shared on the Psycledelics site are very much like Goa/Trance, which was also Arguru’s preferred musical style, judging the first demo songs that came with Psycle.
The C64 remix scene is at a first glance not centered around a software or technology, but around the idea of making new versions of C64 game tunes from the 80s. The admiration of the classic game composers and the unique sound the C64 hardware produced go to a very high level in these circles. On RKO the original composer of a tune is clearly listed before the person that did a remix. Artistically this leads to the scene being more interested in worshipping and conversion accuracy than in originality. — The stars and idols clearly come from the past and today’s apsirants only have the chance to come close to past genius.
Again funny is that the german dance group Zombie Nation scored a major charts hit with their tune Kernkraft 400 which features a melody from the C64 game Lazy Jones. But they were never spotted on any of the dogmatic C64 remix communities.
The output of another internet community has become a big thing in the charts right now, the Bootleggers. Here’s how it works: The vocals of one pop tune are mixed with the instrumental track from another pop tune. The raw material can be gathered from file sharing services, as well as the software to mix it together.
What is interesting about bootleg mixes is that their attractiveness not only comes from the actual music but also from the violation of copyright that is obvious in these works. Artists have to work under pseudonyms are not able to release records with their mixes as the fees for the use of whole track samples would be too much for these hobbyists. — But some of the mixes are so cleverly made that big record companies are willing to release them and go through all the legal hassle.
The bootlegging community surely has its roots in DJ music, however the internet and special software have become vital tools. Bootleggers have to work fast getting audio material from the latest singles. The best thing for this is filesharing software, for example Kazaa Lite, a hacked version of the Kazaa client. Also the mixing software Sonic Foundry ACID is essential to create bootleg mixes efficiently. Pirated copies of this can be downloaded from filesharing services as well. And in the end, web sites like Boom Selection and again file sharing services are used to spread the music.
A lot of fascination around the bootlegs comes from all this pirate stuff around it. Filesharing software with doubtful legal status, copied music programs, vocal cuts from promotional DJ records that were never meant to be accessible to the public … and all this through really cheap broadband connections offered by corporations like the german Telekom that are known to sue the hell out of everybody for using a T in their name or their »trademarked« magenta color. The cultural change internet imposes on copyright is very apparant in bootlegging.
In micromusic.net a lot of things mentioned before are combined. This is what makes it in my humble opinion the most interesting music community.
United there are musicians using very different software, programmers of music software and some hardware developers, a lot of chatters, video artists and also event organizers. What holds all of them together is the micro_style which can be described as the evolution of the home computer and video game music and graphics style.
micromusic.net applies its own software tools for charts, real time and non-synchronous communication and up/downloading of tunes. The monthly releases are compiled by a jury called the qfs which filter amongst the dozens of music files uploaded. This keeps the system quite small and clear. Also the communication facilities are not really usable when too many people try to apply them at the same time, which makes the meeting in micromusic.net always quite intimate.
Performance plays an important role inside this community. For example star programmers and musicians like rolemodel (developer of the Litte Sound DJ Gameboy tracker) or firestarter (developer of the SIDsyn) are micromusic members. Their projects are for a reason considered very cool and when their names show up at the microtalk, they, as programmers, can make a performance by simply talking to others or revealing some of their knowledge. Also real-life events are taking place throughout Europe and the US, organized by members of the community, where the people are playing their music live or presenting their latest selfmade project. CD and vinyl releases have been done, with remixes made and voted for by community members.
So micromusic.net puts together the tools of the soundtracker community, technical facilities like in commercial communities, the selection process, personality and small size of net labels, the topic of home computer sound but without dogmas involved, plus online and offline performances. Efforts to put a pirate image to it comparable to the Bootleggers have turned out not to be working. Instead the friendly style and details in the simple but effective technology that easily integrates with other web sites made micromusic one of the most successful communities that solely have their foundation in home computer and internet culture and not in DJing or other established practices.
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