This time I’m focusing on Netlabels.  What are Netlabels?  Well, like the Kahvi Collective mentioned in the first article they are community organizations that have decided to release collections of music either by individual artists, or in compilations in a way that is analogous to what the large record companies do.  Many Netlabels release these recordings for free (as in without $$$ charges), and under a Creative Commons license, or a license that is very open.

The other aspect of Netlabels is in their history.  Many of  the Netlabels have been around for quite a few years.  They derived from the Demo Scene: a group of hackers (hackers in the good and correct sense of the word) who work with computers at the lowest possible level to produce demonstrations of what the machines can do. In some cases you would be quite astounded by what could be done with an Apple ][ or Commodore 64.  A lot of the music that these intrepid hackers wrote for the demos were initially released as “tracker” files, which predated MP3′s.  Eventually, with the rise of the Internet and MP3′s these intrepid multimedia artists started releasing music on their own for the world to listen.