Three Tune Tuesday — originally started and popularized on Hive by @ablaze — is where i share three of my favourite tunes or performances, all around a central theme.
In 2002, I briefly ran a rogue Internet radio for a small IRC listener base. I used to play a variety of genres, ranging from game music (chiptunes) and ambient to gabber and detroit house/acid, and sometimes dropped in some classical tunes to veer off boredom.
My computer at the time was an AMD K6-III 400MHz, with a measly 768Megabytes of RAM, and our Internet connection was a 128kbps ADSL line. It wasn’t much, but with XMMS/mpv and an Icecast server on Linux, I could still broadcast a 22kHz vorbis ogg stream at 48kbps, which still provided a somewhat nice quality, and worked amazingly well with such limited spec'd setup I had. Had I gone with an mp3 stream, I'd have needed 96kbps to provide a similar quality stream.
I had a few listeners, but they were all actively listening and chatting to me on IRC, so I was quite happy. I would do a few hours on the mic each day, but on the times I was away, I'd let my computer play music randomly from my collections.
It was a few years before the piracy crackdowns were in full motion and our own Gramex/Teosto would be lobbying more stringent copyright laws in Finland. But that experience running what some would call a “pirate radio” taught me something cool about music; You really can't steal it.
But this post isn’t just about my time as a pirate radio DJ—it’s about what I learned from it: music’s true nature.
It was around that time when people started to realize music production was no longer something only big record companies could do. Nope, they had already lost their monopoly in the late 80s and early 90s, when people got their hands on those Atari ST(E) and Amiga computers. That's when anyone equipped with a home computer and a soundtracker could start making their own music. And boy did they...
But that’s a whole other rabbit hole — this post isn’t about homebrew tracker music either.
During the time I was playing tracker mods and other weird shit through Icecast, (or a little bit earlier) I learned about Cory Doctorow and OpenCola. I was already invested in Free Software and Linux, so Doctorow's thesis around immaterial rights (or the strict control of) being pretty much nonsense struck me as profound.
I explored free copyleft licenses and, naturally, the music released under them. I collected all I could find, and played them on my stream.
In 2004, a new music streaming service called Jamendo appeared with an interesting take on copyright licensing; You could release music with different Creative Commons licenses, and people could use the website to browse the music, and find music with a license that they found most appealing. Creative Commons licenses ranged from a completely (mostly) free Attribution only (CC-By) license, to a non-commercial and no-derivatives (CC-By-SA-NC-ND) license that still permitted copying, but prohibited commercial use and the making of derivative works.
So... Jamendo had this excellent tool that let me find music under different licenses, and of course I went for the free'est of the licenses, and downloaded even the crappiest music if it was free to use in any way. (I believed then, that the mere act of sharing the music will help the artists. And I knew I was right. Strict copyright enforcement actually prevents fans from discovering music.)
Along the way, I stumbled upon some unexpected gems. I remember discussing it with a friend of mine, and he concurred, that in his experience, Jamendo was quickly becoming the YouTube of music. It already had enough music, so that one could accidentally find something extremely good amidst all the mundane and frankly bad takes.
So now that I finally got there... here is some obscure but cool music I found on Jamendo:
Doune — In 2222
You can find this song on the album Sweet Superhero.
Doune is a French melodic electropop rock band with somewhat jazzy tones and a female vocalist. I recommend listening the whole album on Jamendo.
Religionnaire — Phéromone S
You can find the song on the album Des Calques Aux Manies.
Another French artist, Religionnaire is a one-man-band blending progressive rock, metal, and avant-garde elements into intricate, introspective compositions. Originally a bassist, his music evolved from experimental bands to solo works balancing complexity and emotion. Phéromone S features a haunting female vocal, adding depth to his rich, layered sound.
HYPE — Anybody here?
(You can find the song on the album Lies and Speeches. I couldn't find it on Jamendo anymore, so this is on YT.)
Hype is also a French rock band, known for their melodic and alternative rock sound. Their style is reminiscient of bands like R.E.M. and Muse, with their emotive vocals and engaging melodies.
Sadly, in 2012, Jamendo underwent a redesign, removing the ability to search music by license or download Ogg Vorbis files. It’s no longer as useful as it once was.
Strangely, all my picks this week turned out to be French. Pure coincidence — or maybe French indie rock just has that magic?
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