The traditional approach to releasing music, independent from what is called “the music industry”, follows a basic formula: record, print CD, promote, distribute, promote, lose money.

It is difficult to know why so many independent musicians follow this pattern, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they will almost certainly lose time and money. Thankfully there’s a new type of independent music label that is emerging on the internet. These entities call themselves net.labels and are in the process of defining an interesting new subculture of independent music distribution.

There’s a new type of independent music label that is emerging on the internet. These entities call themselves _net.labels_ and are in the process of defining an interesting new subculture of independent music distribution

Sharing music

It needs to be said that sharing music online has been going on for a very long time. Perhaps the first substantial example of this was with the sharing of Tracker files over Bulletin Boards. Trackers are a type of sound software that use mod files for storing instructions. These files are then re-interpreted by other Tracker software for replay or for the purpose of creating a derivative work (the mod files are re-editable through the Tracker software).

I am going to skip this very interesting and important phase of online audio and file sharing and look at the more recent history leading to the development of net.labels. This story starts largely at the moment the music industry decided to introduce digital audio to the consumer market.

net.label noiseusse

Before the music industry invented a way to resell us the same music we already owned there were not many complaints about the quality and function of vinyl. In fact when the new media was introduced there was a lot of grumbling, especially by music aficionados because CD audio at that time was an unknown proposition. The physics of this new media made it sound like the technology was inherently inferior and more expensive. Breaking up analog audio into a series of ones and zeros just sounded like a bad idea. How could a mathematical representation of an analog wave (sound wave) possibly sound as good, or, as the CD advocates claimed, better than an analog representation of an analog wave? It just didn’t sound right (excuse the poor pun).

However, the music industry led the charge, and good for them, as there are now few complaints about digital audio. Few complaints… apart from ones that come from those in the music industry. There is of course some irony at work here: the music industry (the people that made us buy all of the music we already owned in the new format—digital audio) are now enraged when consumers ingeniously utilize two of the inherent advantages of the new medium for their own gain: the ability to copy content quickly, and the ability to distribute content virally. Digital audio allows an ease of replication unmatched by any analog audio format that has ever existed.

File sharing

In the “underground” of News Groups file sharing had been going on for some time, largely unharnessed by the surface web dwellers. This was more or less ignored by the industry because the logistics of this kind of distribution meant that only a small minority of geeks participated. Files were generally split into parts and compressed. To put them back together again all of the parts had to be found, de-compressed, and re-assembled. And if one part was missing too bad.

Audio file sharing couldn’t get moving until easy to use consumer technology came along. This technology was of course, peer-to-peer (_P2P_) file sharing

This subculture also didn’t suffer fools, so if you hadn’t been born with the innate knowledge of how to compress and de-compress rar files then there was no point asking, you were by definition, the wrong species to try it in the first place.

net.label ideology

Audio file sharing couldn’t get moving until easy to use consumer technology came along. This technology was of course, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing as demonstrated most prominently by Shaun Fannings’ dorm room invention—Napster.

So the file sharing industry was born. Interestingly for independent music producers, this new technology, combined with MP3, also enabled the distribution of independent music at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.

P2P labels

As a starting point for examining this emerging phenomenon take a look at a net.label, which uses P2P networks for distributing its content. Most net.labels do not, in fact, utilize this method as their primary distribution technology, preferring to allow users to download the music direct from their homepages, with P2P as a secondary strategy for distribution. For starters take SoulSeek Records.

S oulSeek has a special place in my heart, as it was one of the file sharing sites I used most before the music industry became the bogeyman and closed most successful file sharing networks down in a legislative rampage. SoulSeek, instead of dying, transformed itself into a new model of record label.

Although you can use SoulSeek to share music illegally, it tries to distance itself from this practice and indemnify itself as its policy now reads:

“Soulseek(tm) does not endorse nor condone the sharing of copyrighted materials. You should only share and download files, which you are legally allowed to or have otherwise received permission to share. Soulseek(tm). was created to encourage the sharing of public domain music from unsigned, independent artists willing to share their work and communicate with a large audience in an efficient way.” (SoulSeek Records rules)

However, SoulSeek doesn’t do much to make concrete its position as an independent music distributer as opposed to a file sharing network where many illegal files get shared. In fact it exists in rather vulnerable territory as the operators of this system charge money to users that want “priority access” (you pay to be first in line) and this is something the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will likely take a rather dim view of when SoulSeek finally appears in their radar. However not appearing in their radar seems to be the only defensive tactic of SoulSeek as founder Nir Arbel said __ when interviewed by slyck.com in SoulSeek Records news :

Slyck.com:__ Considering mostly techno, dance, house and electronic music is on the network, do you feel this has prevented the RIAA from taking an interest in SoulSeek?

Nir Arbel:__ It couldn’t have hurt. Considering the majority of stuff trafficked on the system is probably non-RIAA owned, and seeing as the system is pretty small to begin with, it’s likely we’re not even on the RIAA’s radar.

This doesn’t look like a smart or sustainable strategy to me. Considering the paranoia of the RIAA, I wouldn’t bet on SoulSeek lasting the distance.