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eh, I find my own favorite music too distracting, then I start thinking about other stuff and skipping forwards and messing with the playlist. So I find it the least effort to just have a good internet radio stream going on in the background.

Most of them I discovered here on Slashdot, even.

Groove Salad on http://somafm.com/ (many other streams there worth trying too, most of my favorite songs are from Lush, but GS is the best coding stream)

Sleepbot on http://sleepbot.com/ for a wide variety of background ambience that's not necessessarily music

Nectarine http://scenemusic.net/ for video game / tracker stuff

Those are my go-to options for keeping my tempo up through the long nights.

But it feels so, so wrong to listen to mod / xm / it files without a FastTracker or at least openCubicPlayer -like interface to visualize the individual channels :P

Even nectarine streams their demoscene music in aac/mp3/ogg format :P

While we're in the process of pimping sites..

I want to add a link to a small net radio me and some friends are running : Nectarine Demoscene Radio. It plays music from the demoscene, and some music from old games, where the authors were either a part of or a big inspiration from the scene. The music is either licensed from the artists (some of them even frequent visitors to the site), or public domain.

The users themselves decide what to play (each user have three request slots), and the songs are then locked for re-requests for a while, so you get a decent variety. There's some crap music being played now and then, but overall good quality :)

Here are some random productions that we play music from, that also have a YT video.

If you'd like some alternative / computer music, pop in, stay a while, and listen! Maybe you'll like it :)

IMO the orginal song was better than the ripoff. But I was going to say, There is a demoscene streaming radio to get demoscene tunes:
http://www.scenemusic.net/

Listen to cool mods and chip tunes and stuff for free and legal. Better than that mainstream shit anyways. The C64 demos and especially that beautiful SID sound chip inside the thing made very beautiful sounds. Good enough people modify their C64s and convert them into synths... someone also made a synth called the SIDStation based on left-over stocks of the SID chip Check out this wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64

The sound chip, SID, had three channels, each with its own ADSR envelope generator, and with several different waveforms, ring modulation and filter capabilities. It too, was very advanced for its time. It was designed by Bob Yannes, who would later co-found synthesizer company Ensoniq. Yannes criticized other contemporary computer sound chips as "primitive, obviously (...) designed by people who knew nothing about music." Often the game music became a hit of its own among C64 users. Well-known composers and programmers of game music on the C64 were Rob Hubbard, David Whittaker, Ben Daglish, Martin Galway and David Dunn among many others. Due to the chip's limitation to three channels, chords were played as arpeggios typically, coining the C64's characteristic lively sound.

There are two versions of the SID chip, the first version was the MOS Technology 6581, which is to be found in all of the original "breadbox" C64s, and early versions of the C64C and the Commodore 128. It was later replaced with the MOS Technology 8580 in 1987. The sound quality was a little more crisp on the 6581 and many Commodore 64 fans still prefer its sound. The main difference between the 6581 and the 8580 was the voltage supply: the 6581 uses a 12 volt supply, while the 8580 required only 9 volts. A voltage modification can be made to use a 6581 in a C64C board (which uses 9V).
The SID chip has a distinctive sound which retained a following of devotees. In 1999, Swedish company Elektron produced a SidStation synth module, built around the SID chip, using remaining stocks of the chip. Several bands use these devices in their music.

The tracker/demo scene music lives on, you can download trackers for linux/windows/mac. It's a cool geeky way to have fun and make music. There's tons of demo songs to play around with, tons of free sample sites out there to get free sounds, and tons of free synth and effects plugins (besides the masses of commercial stuff you can buy). Maybe it's just me, but this is what I'm doing, and I'll support the tracker and demo scene before I ever spend another cent on mainstream corporate music. I don't care if it sounds good or bad, it can be fun, and I think the results are a lot more worthwhile than mainstream radio. I don't feel like such a whore this way :) IMO that mainstream stuff isn't worth buy, isn't worth pirating, isn't worth listening too, and I probably would refuse it even if they offered to pay me to listen too it.

Would be nice if all the artwork and music for demos and boot loaders where kept around. The digital expression that kick started the video game industry and hackers turned video game producers should be kept around.

Entire parts of the digital, pre-internet history are being lost with new technology.

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Scene Music

I think you're looking at the wrong technology. Some of those linked sites to the hacked up MIDIs are cool and everything, but MIDIs have their limitations and they seem like a particularly clumsy technology to me.

What MIDIs these days do is work with a set of digital samples then apply fancy transformations to the PCM data to give you instruments with different pitches, frequencies, etc. My first big problem with this is that MIDI is pretty much stuck with a single set of samples for the instruments unless you use something like Creative's SoundFont where you can change the sound of every instrument in the set. The problem being is that now you can't distribute the original MIDI and expect a consistent listening experience from all of your users. You're forced to record the audio to an MP3 or something on your machine before distributing it.

Which leads me to my next point. Incase you were not aware, a new type of music has existed since the days of the Amiga that fixes the problems of the gimped MIDI standard. I'm talking about digital modules (MOD, S3M, IT, XM, 669, etc.) These modules work on the same priniciples as MIDI but they have some distinct advantages:

• Runs on the cheap hardware and low end systems. Just needs a sound card capable of.. Outputting sound..
• The digital samples used for the music are saved within the file itself. Sounds the same on everyone's system.
• Better quality than MIDIs if they're done right. Some formats (XM and IT especially) have some pretty slick advnaced features for instruments.
• The audio processing for most of these is fast enough to be run in real time alongside some other processor consuming task. (Doesn't really matter these days, however.)

My second largest problem with MIDI back in the day was that by comparison, the software MIDI emulators drained the computer of most of its resources.

So there you have it. I recommend diving into this world instead and stay clear of those icky MIDIs. Here are some resources if you don't know where to get started:

• MODPlug Central popluar player and tracker. And yes, you can use your MIDI keyboard to compose music with a lot of these trackers.
• Nectarine Shoutcast streams of a lot of these modules
• The Mod Archive Could forget the good old MOD Archive! A modern repository for this type of music.
• chiptune.com A great resource for Chiptunes! (really, really small modules.) And music in other formats (including Adlib music.)
• Aminet Has a lot of the older ("classic") modules that first appeared on the Amiga with the popular ProTracker
• Fasttracker 2 Just for completeness. The trakcer that introduced the XM file format. The same functionality is in ModPlug tracker.
• Impulse Tracker Included for completeness. Another excellent tracker like Fasttracker. Introduced the IT file format. The same functionality exists in ModPlug tracker.
• ScreamTracker Only including a link to information about it because of the nostaliga involved with it. It's lacking in the features that Fasttracker and Impluse Tracker have but it's really easy to use.
• The Hornet Archive Another nostaliga site. Music and programs from the Demoscene.

Also, if you're interested, there has been some development relatively recently with "Buzz trakcers"(?) I don't have as much knowledge with these but from what I saw with Jeskola Buzz, it's really very

I was hoping (for a few millisconds there) that it was about the Demoscene.

*sigh* Oh well. Back to Nectarine

This isn't exactly a head-on solution, but here's some particularly nerdy outlets for non-RIAA music:

Nectarine Radio - streaming C64, Atari ST, Adlib, etc. music
OC Remix - huge repository of submitted video game remixes
Streaming radio of above
Metroid Metal - Surprisingly well done

This is one game that I believe had underrated music. I'll have to check this out when I get home. OCRemix has a streaming radio station at oc.ormgas.com, if you don't mind all the Final Fantasy and Sonic music they play.

Also, for Commodore/Atari ST fans, there's Nectarine Radio.

I haven't *downloaded* any of those files in ages though. Anyone know where one can find good ones?

The Mod Archive, Scene.org and Nectarine Radio are good places to start.

Though I recently converted much of my mod/XM/s3m/IT collection to mp3 format, since it will play in my car/portables that way.

I'm trying to do the same to transfer my entire module collection to my iPod. Question: What do you use to do it? I'm currently outputting the tunes to WAV with Modplug because it's a fairly accurate player (but not 100%) and the wav writer is of pretty good quality. This is a bit of a headfuck because there is no batch converter and I have to reselect the options every time. I then have to convert everything to MP3 with CdEX. There must be a more straightforward way to do this... any ideas?

Hey! Even though new songs don't pop up as often as they used to, there still are a lot of old ones that are worth listening to.

Who uses... pff :)

Don't forget about all the great stuff done on the C64 and other home computers like the Amiga or Atari. Last Ninja, Commando, Turrican and others had such great music that I'd load the game and let the computer run without playing just to listen to the music. Tune in to Nectarine to hear game and demo music!

People are still listening to game sound tracks of the 80's. Giana Sisters, Outrun, many 8bit computers and consoles. Almost everything is original music. You can checkout the online radio at SceneMusic.net

As for new music, I think its pretty cool the xbox games has most music in windows media, easy enough to copy and convert. Amped series has tons of cool Indie music. Just goto the music directory on the dvd.

I think my favorite video game that had purchased music from Crystal Method, N20 on PSX. It has the whole vegas CD in the game.

Step into the way-back machine. Hearken back to the 80's when people had their Amigas and they wrote songs for MOD trackers in their free time, and distributed them via dial-up bulletin board services that were ubiquitous through the 80's to early 90's before web browsers were developed and the net became commercialized.

These MODs, containing a number of samples and a playback script similar in concept, but different in structure to MIDI files, were to music what Linux is to operating systems- an open sourced, freely downloadable form of music, for which the artist earned no royalties. The MOD format was originally created to make game sountrack music on early computers with limited resources (such as the Amiga with it's 512 KB of memory) but has grown into a format of its own, with many offshoots such as Screamtracker (.s3m), Impulse Tracker (.it), and Fast Tracker (.xm), just to name a few. The vast majority of module music is of the techno genre, although some rock, pop, and even classical has been produced by music coders.

In the late eighties, there was a group called the KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front). They used to call themselves the JAMs (Justified Ancients of Mummu- go read the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson to learn more about the JAMs), and for a while, they called themselves the Timelords. The KLF had a knack for getting in trouble for unauthorized use of samples from other people's music. They were forced to destroy all copies of an album they released (the 1987 album, IIRC) to avoid lawsuits. Because of this, they came to view the entire music industry as agents of the Illuminati, a supersecret organization hell bent on controlling what the world sees and hears.

Later, an unrelated KLF emerged, called the Kosmic Loader Foundation. They used to make the music for "loaders", or short demo programs that came up when you launched cracked games. (Remember the wonderful world of demos and the demo scene?) Anyway, they changed their name to KFMF, or Kosmic Free Music Foundation. Whatever music they produced, you could download for free, no questions asked. Or you could purchase CDs with their music (in both tracked and MP3 format) for a nominal fee. Of course, the idea for their tracked music was the same as for open-source software: If you modify a song or "rip" the samples, at least give credit where it's due.

Sadly, the KFMF no longer exists, and pretty much the entire demo scene has fallen by the wayside, but is still alive with tracked music at places like the aforementioned Mod Archive and Nectarine Radio. Nowadays, programs such as Cakewalk, Reason, and Cubase VST have replaced trackers (but are very expensive, unlike trackers, which have always been free.) Like trackers, they have their legions of adherents who create and swap music files, plugins, and effects, but the idea remains the same: If music was open-sourced, free as in speech and free as in beer, nobody could control it, no RIAA, Illuminati, or whatever.

Outrun tunes from the arcade and sega mastersystem.
Mario Brothers, Castlevania for snes.
Ultima, Rambo, Yie are Kung fu, Giana Sisters for C64.
Super Frog, Zool, Turrican for the Amiga.
Duke Nukem 3D, Doom for PC.

Too many hours wasted, in fact, i like to listen to http://www.scenemusic.net/ to remember some of the older games.

BTW, the first game with great music that really got me, was a platformer on the C64 called Trolls and Tribulations by Creative Software, in fact the company is no longer around. You can find it at Trolls and Tribulations

Step into the way-back machine. Hearken back to the 80's when people had their Amigas and they wrote songs for MOD trackers in their free time, and distributed them via dial-up bulletin board services that were ubiquitous through the 80's to early 90's before web browsers were developed and the net became commercialized.

These MODs, containing a number of samples and a playback script similar in concept, but different in structure to MIDI files, were to music what Linux is to operating systems- an open sourced, freely downloadable form of music, for which the artist earned no royalties. The MOD format was originally created to make game sountrack music on early computers with limited resources (such as the Amiga with it's 512 KB of memory) but has grown into a format of its own, with many offshoots such as Screamtracker (.s3m), Impulse Tracker (.it), and Fast Tracker (.xm), just to name a few. The vast majority of module music is of the techno genre, although some rock, pop, and even classical has been produced by music coders.

A tale of two KLFs
In the late eighties, there was a group called the KLF (Kopyright Liberation Front). They used to call themselves the JAMs (Justified Ancients of Mummu. Go read the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson to learn more about the JAMs.) The KLF had a knack for getting in trouble for unauthorized use of samples from other people's music. They were forced to destroy all copies of an album they released (the 1987 album, IIRC) to avoid lawsuits. Because of this, they came to view the entire music industry as agents of the Illuminati, a supersecret organization hell bent on controlling what the world sees and hears.

Later, an unrelated KLF emerged, called the Kosmic Loader Foundation. They used to make the music for "loaders", or short demo programs that came up when you launched cracked games. (Remember the wonderful world of demos and the demo scene?) Anyway, they changed their name to KFMF, or Kosmic Free Music Foundation. Whatever music they produced, you could download for free, no questions asked. Or you could purchase CDs with their music for a nominal fee. Of course, the idea for their tracked music was the same as for open-source software: If you modify a song or "rip" the samples, at least give credit where it's due.

Sadly, the KFMF no longer exists, and pretty much the entire demo scene has fallen by the wayside, but is still alive with tracked music at places like Nectarine Radio. Nowadays, there are myriads of tracked formats, and even the mainstream music programs such as Cakewalk and Reason have their legions of adherents who create and swap music files, but the idea remains the same: If music was open-sourced, free as in speech and free as in beer, nobody could control it, no RIAA, Illuminati, or whatever.

I must be tired, nectarine is at www.scenemusic.net

Also buddy on IRC just told me.

[21:37] [SGtrUck] iw: The author, tArzAn, indicated this morning to a friend of mine (who's name is truck) that he is considering making it available for osX and Linux. There were a few problems porting last year's code - but he had offers from several folks to do it, and they are in the process, apparently, of doing this. Not right now however - they have to go to Assembly (a DEMO party)

But who actually listens to MP3 streams anyway?

There must be thousands of wannabe dj's for every listener. If they're automated streams, then what's the point if it isn't something really special (like Spamradio or Nectarine).

Are there any technical benefits by using IPv6 over IPv4 btw? Something about frame sizes or something?

The way I've found most of my music is that I went to the site of a group I liked and checked their links page. If I liked something they linked to, then I'd check that link page as well.

Also, if you're into electronica, you should look at some of the stuff on Nectarine.

There is an annual minimum royalty of $500, which means that the smallest of small webcasters may not be able to afford it.

Put up paypal, 50 bux a month and your covered. Of course better switch to peercast so your bandwidth doesnt run up your expenses (which they can charge 7% if expenses are larger)

BTW, people over at Nectarine have been able to get enough donations to pay for bandwidth. They are even testing OGG streaming (less bandwidth than mp3s)

that's right, i was talking about original work by great composers like lizard king, purple motion and others(the real names escape me).

all i ever saw was just a handful of 'remix' modules that were derivatives from commercial pop. most(all) of the good stuff was original pieces of work.

www.scenemusic.net for streaming 'radio' of this said scene music. there's plenty good music of this variety to kick listening commercial stuff, and for heavy metal there's bands like machinae supremacy to fill free needs.

I'm sure this is redundant as hell, but there is also Nectarine, scene music radio.

http://www.scenemusic.net/

I'm personally a big fan of the Nectarine. Broadcasting music from the demo scene of the 80's and 90's. Timeless Amiga and C64 music such as Second Reality, Nine Fingers, Deadlock, Desert Dreams, and much more. You need this site if ever having owned an Amiga/C64, especially if you had lots of MODs that were lost when switching to PC or was into demos. Check out the Top 50 requested music yourself and let Winamp enjoy playing some excellent retro MOD/S3M music!

I hope that site never dies, and likely it won't since the material they play is either copyright free or played with the author's permission. So it's a free station playing free music.

I'm personally a big fan of the Nectarine. Broadcasting music from the demo scene of the 80's and 90's. Timeless Amiga and C64 music such as Second Reality, Nine Fingers, Deadlock, Desert Dreams, and much more. You need this site if ever having owned an Amiga/C64, especially if you had lots of MODs that were lost when switching to PC or was into demos. Check out the Top 50 requested music yourself and let Winamp enjoy playing some excellent retro MOD/S3M music!

I hope that site never dies, and likely it won't since the material they play is either copyright free or played with the author's permission. So it's a free station playing free music.

Interestingly enough the BitBoys are actually ex-Future Crew guys. As are members of the Max Payne and 3D Mark teams.

Future Crew Timeline

And Skaven was even competeing. In fact he won the "Instrumental Music" category with a new version/sequel to his previous winning song "Catch That Goblin".

Anyone interested in MOD/ULT/S3M/IT/XM/669 music from the demo scene should checkout Nectarine Radio.

Or those Commodore 64 losers.

Well. That was rather messed up. Our schools had either apple2 or c64s. I personally bought a C64, Thing was great, 40 col BBs'ing was lame. A few terminals came out that would split the blocks into 2 letters, so you could try to emulate 80 column.
Migrated to a 128D, running DesTerm I was able to get Ansi, 14.4 baud, and 80 columns. Then Amiga+Tcp later....

Hell, the C64 scene was larger then atari, mac combined, it still goes on today! They still have Demo parties for old C64 hackers. Scene Music I still listen to music from the old days, Giana Sisters(Chris Huelsbeck), Rob Hubbard, etc.. The BBS was my way of reaching the UK scene from the US, The real computer gurus. Strange thou, the family up the street, wrote Myst. Strange Strange world.

If you want to get more video game music, there is streaming mp3 video game music at Scene Music. They have reflectors around the world, so you should be able to listen to a stream near you. If your lucky enough to have a high speed dsl, try the 128K stream.

BTW, Have you heard Giana Sisters lately?
Old skewl test - mod.gianasisters or gianas.sid
-
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room. - Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

I pay over 90 bux a month for IDSL, thats ISDN, only 2x the speed of a modem! But its unlimited. ;)

80 bux for high speed access? Sounds damn good to me. The only thing that would concern me, is that they are lowering the monthly rate for low usage customers. This is needed to switch to a usage based system, and when they start doing that, it will really be down hill for us. Slashdot users are not the norm. Not many grannies downloading linux iso's or mp3s all month.

I wonder in 10 years, how many products will migrate from service to usage based fees.

-
Are you into the scene? www.scenemusic.net

hehe, easy to remember the gathering. http://www.gathering.org

But then, The Gathering is much much more than a lan party, most of these parties are Demo partys. And im amazed at how these young video game players dont even know what the demo scene is. People compete with the best demo, not the best frag maniac.

Check out google for more info.
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Multim ed ia/Demos/Parties/

Also, why arnt you listening to scene music, the music of the demo parties!?!?
http://www.scenemusic.net

Demoscene - Music, Gfx, DEMOS!

The largest computer artforms is the demo. These demos are music and gfx wrapped into a small package.

There are contests around the world called "Demo Partys" which give awards on best gfx, best music, best demos in sizes (64K,etc), 1 hour to compose tunes with a set of samples, best mp3, best Gfx, most genuine.

Many of these artists and musicians are working in the game industry or entertainment industry. Many of the older 64/apple/amiga game musicians are working for the largest game companies, creating tunes for your games you play today.

Assembly - The largest Demo party in the world
OrangeJuice - Demoscene information center
Google demo directory.
Nectarine - 100% scene music radio!
Crystal Melon - Famous cracktros (minidemos) many converted to Shockwave so people can view them. (They were on a c64 and Amiga!)

If you interested in video game, demo music, mods (4 channel) music, is like a midi with the wave files included.
Check out
Nectarine - 100% scene music radio!
Mod Archive
Google Mod directory
Aminet AmiNet mod archive.
C64: Back in Time CD Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Ben Daglish, Chris Hülsbeck, Peter Clarke - Music Game Gods.

Demoscene - Music, Gfx, DEMOS!

The largest computer artforms is the demo. These demos are music and gfx wrapped into a small package.

There are contests around the world called "Demo Partys" which give awards on best gfx, best music, best demos in sizes (64K,etc), 1 hour to compose tunes with a set of samples, best mp3, best Gfx, most genuine.

Many of these artists and musicians are working in the game industry or entertainment industry. Many of the older 64/apple/amiga game musicians are working for the largest game companies, creating tunes for your games you play today.

Assembly - The largest Demo party in the world
OrangeJuice - Demoscene information center
Google demo directory.
Nectarine - 100% scene music radio!
Crystal Melon - Famous cracktros (minidemos) many converted to Shockwave so people can view them. (They were on a c64 and Amiga!)

If you interested in video game, demo music, mods (4 channel) music, is like a midi with the wave files included.
Check out
Nectarine - 100% scene music radio!
Mod Archive
Google Mod directory
Aminet AmiNet mod archive.
C64: Back in Time CD Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Ben Daglish, Chris Hülsbeck, Peter Clarke - Music Game Gods.

Portals didnt fail, the idea of people of getting something for free failed. Even /. is going to charge (For non-ad viewing)...

A couple years down the road, expect to see more portals charge, and the content go up. With your monthly charge includes download of mp3s, viewing divx movies, reading full length ebooks, jump start on buying tickets from ticketmaster, stocks and inside info..

The Internet needs to grow up a little, and subscription based services need to flourish. (humm, .net anyone?) Fileplanet knows this, they are now charging you for quick and fast download. If not wait in line. Whats your time worth? After a full day of work and RL, only a couple hours to tinker/read quite allot.

ATTWS gives away free unlimited walled garden Internet access, you can upgrade and get email and the ability to surf anywhere. Do people upgrade for the full services? Yes. Expect to see this type of free/extra services everywhere.

*side note, Stocks and Stock news, I guess im just getting old, kids college funds, bitch about points and interest. But I still kick ass in CounterStrike. :)

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Nectarine 100% DemoScene Radio 24/7 - tune in/get down

You know, I've been out of the scene for awhile now, but I recently discovered Nectarine. It's streaming demoscene music radio, so for all of you who need your oldschool fix (or who simply want to find out what we've been listening to all this time) check it out. it features a nice requesting system which is lightyears ahead of any other shoutcast station I've used.
-Darius (Rayn) / Outworld

Major scene news site: ojuice

If you want to have a very good glimpse at what the scene is producing / as produced:
http://www.pouet.net
It's an everything2-type site..

For a music radio broadcasting solely scene music:
nectarine radio,
(Those three websites are very well integrated..)

and finally shameless plug on noerror. (scene music news)