herr_professor (FMA Admin)

 With almost no commerical label support, aside from one-offs or cross-overs, the chip music community has to be creative in its use of self promotion. The great majority of chip music releases tend to be self released (think cd-rs at gigs or personal webspaces) or released on netlabels. The typical chip music netlabel is somewhere between play acting like a traditional label (Catalog numbers! Press Releases!) and curating like a highly specified blog (like the FMA you are reading right now).

 It can be rare when a constantly good label hooks up with a consistently excellent artist. So when young label Dwd Records announced the Release of Goto80's Updown, it was an announcement to the chip music community that this label wouldn't be another chip upload site and that they would deliver only quality releases. To this day, Updown is one of my very favorites.

Goto80 is one of the most prolific, outspoken and learned voices in the international chip music community. Creating music that is seemingly at home in any genre of electronic music, Goto80 has been one of the freshest and most consistent artists for over 15 years. One of the few modern day performers that can trace his roots back to the demoscene, Goto80 is able to break musical boundaries while maintaining enough crossover appeal and balance authentic chip styles with aggressively infectious songwriting.

DWD Records has a small but impressive catalog featuring such hard core favorites as Divag and Yerzmyey. While Netlabels lack the resources that commercial netlabels have, DWD succeeds with a few crucial elements:

• RSS feed - Without a promotional budget, writers and fans alike can plug in the website updates into their readers. This way the label can avoid having to constantly stay in the public's mind, and simply operate as a fan service to a smaller, more dedicated market.
• Well tagged tracks - It is essential for the label to properly present the files in a way that will survive the viral nature of the internet and bring people back to the website if people happen to not listen to the music in the days or weeks after downloading.

It's the use of the Big N that allows these labels to host mp3s with almost no compensation for the artists. The label acts as a connector, as a place to showcase the cream of the crop and to provide a reliable source for new music.The artist has little to lose, and can focus on the business of making music, rather than worrying about their presence on various pockets of the internet.

In upcoming articles we'll continue to explore the close relationship that chip music artists have with their labels. Until then, enjoy this excellent EP, specifically the glitchy bitpop of Love Crime. See you next time.