Soulseek Records (an offshoot of the electronic music file sharing network Soulseek) is a USA-based "democratic label, with all decisions made by a dedicated group of users who confer via message board, rather than by [a] committee of businessmen or a CEO."1 Along with being listener-friendly, Soulseek Records is also much more artist-friendly than other labels: instead of getting publishing and distribution rights over the artists or their works, Soulseek Records does not take anything away from the artists. This new way of managing a label (and the fact that everything that was hurting "traditional" labels (e.g. the Internet, CD-Rs) is directly beneficial to and is part of Soulseek Records) will help them to grow and flourish.
The label's releases to date:
- Compilation 001
- One Minute Massacre version 1
- Cen-Art
- 24 Hour Massacre
One Minute Massacre version 2 is around, but not an official "release", and it looks like One Minute Massacre version 3 will be out relatively soon, too.
Mission Statement:1
"Soulseek Records will prove that musicsharing is not the evil demon that many believe it to be, but rather that it can actually be the foundation for a positive new relationship between artists, labels, and listeners."
All releases are available for free, legal download from scene.org (http://www.scene.org/dir.php?dir=/music/groups/soulseek_records/), as well as a few other places on the WWW, and can be redistributed freely. If you're more of a capitalist type, you can send Soulseek some bucks to support the effort and pay for supplies, and they'll snail mail you a copy. I'll be buying all three releases when I have money to spare.
References:
1: Soulseek Records: http://www.soulseekrecords.com/