It's happening now... right before your ears
While the RIAA is busy suing fan after fan for "infringing" on content owners' rights (and making a bundle in damages, I might add), there's an alternate music industry sprouting all around them. An alternate industry that's providing the world with better music than the mainstream media monster has allowed through it's profit-seeking, soul-sucking filtration system in over a decade.
I can't emphasize enough how important netlabels are going to prove to be in the coming months/years. blocSonic is here to help filter through the mountains of music available for free online, but we certainly are not alone. There's a growing number of sites that are devoted to filtering through the many, many netlabels' content. Sites like Free Albums Galore, ccNeLaS, SonicSquirrel, Indieish, Submusica's Música Livre, Netlabelism, Black Sweater, White Cat, Gratisvibes and Starfrosch. Why do we do it? Because we believe in it. We've discovered great music. That music is hot in rotation on our computers, mp3 players, CD-R, or what have you. So when you're done downloading and listening to "netBloc Volume 1", be sure to check out the above mentioned sites.
Many of you have probably heard about netlabels before, but think that it's primarily electronic music that's released. Sure, a large quantity of netlabel releases are electronic in nature, but there's a growing number of releases that are not even close to being electronic. Pick any genre, and you can find it online via netlabels. When you discover a new favorite group/artist/netlabel (we know you will) please support them by paying to see them perform, purchasing products or music they have for sale or just making a small donation. These people are gracious enough to supply the music for free, the least we can do as fans is to help them see a return for their efforts.
In the coming months, we at blocSonic will be working hard to provide the best netlabel compilations available anywhere. We'll also be working hard developing the second phase of blocSonic. We're remaining tight-lipped about this second phase, but we will say that it won't be a blog and we will still be providing the monthly compilations.
If you have any questions/comments, please don't hesitate to contact us. We'd love to hear from you.
UPDATE: Many thanks goes out to Marvin at Free Albums Galore for the glowing review of Volume 1! I'm still blushing... :) Seriously, well thought out blog entries like yours are truly appreciated. I'll definitely be subscribing to your RSS feed.
UPDATE AGAIN: Thanks also to the great folks at Black Sweater, White Cat. They also posted a great review of Volume 1. Terrific blog, guys.