TCUC, FMA, NLC, Phlow, SonicSquirrel, LegalTorrents, Libre.fm, Jamendo and a whole litany of NetAudio groups; sometimes it seems almost as if the free music movement has as many apparent 'hubs' as it has NetLabels, a host of little (or large) groups each doing, to some degree at least, the same thing as the rest and all theoretically a fine choice for a central point from which our community can progress. It's a testament to the enthusiasm of the scene that each of the above groups has, in some way, managed to thrive in its own little corner and within its own little sub-clique of the greater whole. Even better, they do sometimes manage to work together and support each other, networking which without question does the movement good and helps promote the ideal. At other times though the whole collective of efforts can seem like a mess of redundancies, neglected good ideas and wasted effort from those who're struggling to support free music.

Another day, another plug for the forums, which are woefully underused. Anyone's who's started a forum before, for any purpose, will know just how hard it is to breathe life into a new community. To start with there's the unavoidable catch 22 of dragging new users in; nobody wants to join a forum which isn't active, no forum is active until people join so I'm asking all those folks who poke their heads round the door (and there are quite a lot) to sign up before leaving. Numerous free music forums have failed in the past by virtue of a lack of participation and I still don't believe that there's no call for such a thing, just that the challenges in creating it are too time consuming and, generally, depressing for people to stick with it. Nothing in our scene works without your participation, yes, you, sitting their reading this with supreme indifference. No label can survive without listeners downloading and spreading the word, no blog can survive without people showing their interest and sharing, no distribution site without uploaders and downloads and definitely no forum without contributors. The NetLabel Coalition, the forums as a whole, sure, the scene in general, these things are only as worthwhile and interesting as you're willing to make them and my obsession aside it'd be a shame to see all the genuine enthusiasm and intent contained within our scene diminished and depleted due to a lack of participation.

No fatalism though, the NLC is building up nicely, the forums will, eventually, follow suit but like the whiny bastard I am I've once again assumed the role of prodding people into action. So go, sign up, post something, even if you're just telling me I'm a tit.

TCUC's Forums & Home of the NetLabel Coalition

Dan Tindall - Harrisburg (Independent)

Just about the only use I've had for Last.fm since the advent of Spotify is to sit, wide-eyed, marvelling at the vast amount of excellent music I listen to, a testament to my immaculate taste and musical wisdom. Now though I've discovered the (very new) Libre.fm, which is, surprisingly, the free music alternative to it's slightly defunct commercial alternative and which has the very obvious advantage of only covering music which is free to download. Plus it represents, or rather could represent another move from the CC community to set itself up as a viable alternative to the commercial distribution system, which is a nice idea at the very least.

Anyway, the site is still very much in it's infancy and that shows in the primitiveness of it all but everything has to start somewhere. Well worth a look regardless.