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How come nobody mentions Hornet? It's been distributing free songs online since 1987! In addition, there are other free sites:

Kosmic: http://kosmic.org/
The MOD archive: http://modarchive.org/
scene.org: http://scene.org/

I'd like to second this. I was a member of the Kosmic Free Music Foundation from 1997 on. As the name implies, anyone could download our music for free.

However the group, and our website, generated a lot of traffic and interest and I think the users might have been willing to pay for access to certain services in order to communicate directly with their favorite artists, have access to chatroom sessions for Q&As, get 'members only' info or betas of upcoming tracks. Let the music prove you're good by putting it out for free, and once the fans are locked in, they won't think twice about paying to get privileged access. (N.B. We never did this, but I guess that's because it would have been 'against the spirit' of the demoscene.)

Selling 'cover art' is a waste of time IMO; as some people have already pointed out here, it's not worth the hassle of the printing process.

Another thing that Kosmic did was to sell archive CDs (containing, e.g. a year of tracks) and T-shirts. Alright, we're moving away from the core issue, but afaik these always sold OK.

I wish we would see more free music.
Kosmic is a great organization, but they need a fast host, and aparently do not have the means by themselves to get one.
Kosmic Free Music Foundation

Instead of sipping from the cup of lukewarm techno that is most modern electronica, I'd suggest diving into the 16-bit wonderland that was and is the MODscene.

Back before there were MP3s or computers fast enough to play them, there were MODs -- 4 channel music files that began on the Amiga, and contained their own samples. MODs encouraged experimentation in electronic music on a level never seen before -- you could download a MOD, load it up in your tracker, and start coding a new song using the samples already there.

MODs branched out from their 4 channel beginnings into multiple channels and a variety of new extensions like .S3M, .XM, *.ULT, *.IT., and the more powerful the tracking software became, the more people were drawn to the scene. It was the online equivalent of jazz clubs in the '30s. I think it's one of the great secret stories of the web.

Then RealAudio hit. And after that, MP3. Online music aficionados began to follow a different path, and MODs, like BBS culture, slowly died. The MOD culture is still around, eclipsed but not forgotten. I'd suggest starting with The Kosmic Free Music Foundation, arguably the most prolific and influencial modgroup of that era. You could also check out the Hornet archive or the Modarchive. Either Winamp or XMMS should play them.

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Check your karma. It's changed.

While I don't think that it's exactly what you're thinking of, the Kosmic Free Music Foundation is a large repository of Free (speech, beer) music.

KFMF Website

-Matt

Kosmic Free Music Foundation is group of artists. Their music can be downloaded from WWW-site of KFMF and MP3.com and you can buy their CDs and CD-ROMs. And of cause, you can copy their music to all your friends. I am sure, they have nothing to do with RIAA.


Here is relevant URLs:

http://www.kosmic.org/

http://www.kosmic.org/music.php3

http://www.mp3.com/kosmic

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/126/kosmic_art.htm l

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/67/kosmic_free_mus ic_foundati.html

Kosmic Free Music Foundation is group of artists. Their music can be downloaded from WWW-site of KFMF and MP3.com and you can buy their CDs and CD-ROMs. And of cause, you can copy their music to all your friends. I am sure, they have nothing to do with RIAA.


Here is relevant URLs:

http://www.kosmic.org/

http://www.kosmic.org/music.php3

http://www.mp3.com/kosmic

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/126/kosmic_art.htm l

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/67/kosmic_free_mus ic_foundati.html

There are two kinds of music distribution that are vaguely like "Open Source" software.

• Music that is "freely distributable"
• Music that is distributed in some source form.

For the first kind, check out Kosmic Free Music Foundation. For the second, some of KFMF's titles qualify, as they are distributed in .MOD format of varients thereof. (MOD files contain a collection of sound samples and a controlling sequence of triggers.)

Disclaimer: I do some technical programming work for KFMF.

Another good place is the Kosmic Free Music Foundation. Lots of good stuff.

I read TBG before Neverness; fortunately, I read the two a few years apart so that TBG didn't ruin Neverness for me. Both are very good. I haven't finished the series yet; they're hard books to find.

Other SF authors in the same vein, writing literate SF, are the aforementioned Ia in Banks (make sure you consider this website), the well-known Ste phen R. Donaldson and Dan Simmons (in particular his Hyperion series). Iain Banks writes non-genre fiction as Iain M. Banks and is hugely popular in the UK. Donaldson, lambasted and praised for his Unbeliever Chronicles, also wrote The Gap Series, a dark DF space opera based on the Ring Cycle. Simmons writes a lot of horror and other dark fiction.

Another author in the vein is Steven Brust (whose Taltos series is his masterwork), as well as the other members of his writing circle, the Pre-Joycean Fellowship, including Emma Bull.

Another fine but relatively obscure author is the powerful writer George Alec Effinger. Lordy lordy, is this man good. If I'm not mistaken, he's also worked on comix with Neil Gaiman and wrote for the supercool SF cartoon Galaxy Rangers, along with another great author, Tom De Haven.

More old-school authors who wrote very post-modern SF include the amazing Avram Davidson (check out the great Treasury) who wrote primarily short stories, and the odd and great Polish author Stanislaw Lem (whose career began in 1951 and continues to this day). Starting from Lem, you get into the great European (including S. America) "fantastic philosophers" Borges and Calvino. And if you like them, then you're sure to like Pynchon, and so on to David Foster Wallace and Don DeLillo, who all write SF-tinged fiction.

And the list goes on.

the music scene rules:

there's no greetings order

• ageema blues & blacksista http http2
• blacktron http
• brothomStates http
• five musicians http
• kosmic http
• level-d http
• maniacs of noise http
• milk http
• mono211/monotonik. http
• mo'playaz http
• n.o.i.s.e http
• Tokyo Dawn Records http
• sunlikamelo-d http
• theralite http
• vibrants http
• ...

don't forget the very good individuals, they are too many too list... check ftp.scene.org/pub/music/artists/

get active...

http://www.kosmic.org

Hey, what kind of hardware do they need?