From Euraka to China

Mp3's make a small world after all

Bret Lester led a simple life.

As a student at Humboldt State University, nearly all of his days were filled with fisheries classes, labs, and dinners of rice and black beans. However, something happened almost a year ago that altered this repetitive schedule and, Lester would say, changed his perspective on existence. He accidentally found a digital music-creating program, Fruityloops, online while searching for MP3 files.

This multi-channel synthesizer allows users to modify pitch and tempo of beats, while also dropping in sound samples. Its user-friendly interface and capabilities were hard to beat, and Lester became captivated with creating dark electronic music via his computer. He spent days at a time putting together 30 seconds of drums and bass for tracks, and many nights lying awake contemplating where he'd go next with his music. The only problem was he had these effort-filled songs but no way for his music to get out to a general audience. This is where MP3.com came into play.

MP3.com is a Website featuring a specific type of audio file. MP3 (abbreviated from MPEG Layer 3) allows computer users to store audio files with compact disk quality, yet takes up little file space. In 1997, with Dmitry Boldyrev and Justin Frankel's invention Winamp, the file compression format became widespread and accessible to everyday Internet users. This MP3 player is free for download through www.winamp.com, and its setup is relatively easy. Users just have to make sure their computer and Internet connections are fast enough to handle downloading files. People wanted to know where to go to get free music. Many sites were created, some offering playbacks of concerts by popular artists -- others featuring relatively unknown bands, and some with a mix of the two. MP3.com emerged as a place for lesser-known musicians to promote themselves to mass audiences around the world. Everything on the site is legal and, because of its strict policy of only putting up songs that have been authorized by the copyright holders, you won't find many trendy bands.

Mp3 sound compression technology and web sites have made the world an audience for local musicians. photo by Shannon Dybvig

Lester, under the pseudonym DJ Lifeforce, isn't the only local musician to offer his music to worldwide audiences through MP3.com.

Audiowreck, an experimental and weird rock band from Eureka, has also put music on the site. Nick Davis, the bass player, admits putting music online is a weird jump to make. Once that step was taken though, the band saw the benefits of allowing users from all over to hear their music.

"It's enough when that one person, from wherever, e-mails and says that they like our stuff," Davis says. "That's what makes it so cool. We feel good to make other folks feel good ... and the more folks that feel good from our music, well, the better."

Another local band, Ignit, whose sound is a hybrid of punk and metal, uses MP3.com as the single Internet venue for its music. The guitar player, Berto Salas, came up with the idea of uploading the group's music to the site half a year ago. He says the effort it takes to put music on MP3.com is an easy process of saving songs to a computer and then using a music-uploading program (free ones are available for download) to get the songs on the site. Like Davis, Salas praises MP3.com. "People who might never get to hear you, can (hear you)," he says.

What's DJ Lifeforce's opinion of the site? He's also positive about what it has to offer, but he explains that putting a 5-minute song online can take up to 45 minutes to upload on a modem -- a time-consuming process. Occasionally, he will get e-mail from a fan or some other sort of feedback about his songs. There are other independent artists on MP3.com that also frequent drum 'n' bass message boards. Some of these artists make a lot of money because of MP3.com, and others don't. This method of interaction allows the artists to critique one another, as well as give praise. "What's the point in making music if no one can hear it?" DJ Lifeforce asks.

MP3.com is a forum where you don't have to go through any of the politics of giant corporations to get your music out, and there's no real investment -- you're just sacrificing time and effort. While some would argue time is money, those without cash and with plenty of spare time would tell you putting your music on MP3.com is well worth the work. If enough people download your songs, you can make a small fortune. Before anything becomes available to the public, however, you must first become an MP3.com artist member.

The first step is to go the "New Artist Sign Up" area and click on "Sign Up Now." If you agree with the MP3.com Music Submission Agreement, you can start entering your artist information and upload a picture. After you've done this, you'll want to upload your MP3 file(s). To do this, just go to the "Song Admin" link, click on "Add New Song," enter the title (and description, length, ect.), and upload the song from your hard drive. People can now hear your songs. As you make more, you might want to create a Digital Automatic Music CD so fans can have your songs on CD, rather than just on their computers. This is a pretty neat feature MP3.com offers, because artists don't have to pay any fees to have their music put onto CD. The site actually produces the CD, and all you have to do is market yourself. The only catch is that MP3.com receives 50 percent of every CD you sell. Also, the artist picks how much the CD will cost -- ranging from $4.99 to $9.99 -- and must buy one CD to verify that the files can be decoded. If you become more involved with the process, you might want to create a Website with personal information. Constantly updated sites give fans a reason to visit often, and sites with bulletin boards or chat features have an added bonus of letting fans and artists interact.

DJ Lifeforce continues to meticulously put sounds together with the hopes of creating something new and unheard. The MP3 format and its capabilities have changed his life -- along with those of other local musicians. "But don't expect to get a lot of support from people," DJ Lifeforce warns. Putting independent music online hasn't totally caught on yet and is still on the cutting edge. Indeed, unsigned artists can now reach wide audiences with minimal cost, and music fans can download songs from all genres and parts of the world. Yet many people don't even realize that this sort of technology is available. As time goes by and technology advances, hopefully more people will become aware of what can be done with it. The word "music" will have a whole new meaning, and humans will be unrestricted in getting their creations out to mass audiences.