The story
A band that grew up with the internet
Not a biography. The documented history of trance[]control, from a 386 in Gothenburg to a download server for thousands, as one concrete way into how the internet changed making, spreading and hearing music around 2000. Every paragraph rests on the sources it cites; where the sources disagree, the text says so.
Four stories in one
Each paragraph is marked with the stories it belongs to. Follow one of them through all the chapters:
The artist and the internet
The band's own sites, guestbooks, forum and download servers, and listeners who became part of the work.
The music business
Labels, CDs, downloads and fees: what the band earned, what it expected and what never came.
Platforms and the dot-com years
MP3.com and the services that came and went, and what their changes did to an artist who lived on them.
Technology
From a 386 with a sound card to a software studio, and from one home server to today's single keyboard.
Chapters
- 0 A 386 and an AWE32 · 1995–1998
Two cousins in Gothenburg, a computer that "sucked even back then", and the first step onto the web.
InternetBusinessPlatformsTechnology
- 1 Number 749 · 1998–1999
A track on a free download site reaches No. 1 across all genres, and the CD cheques start to arrive.
InternetBusinessPlatforms
- 2 The first stage, the first guestbook · 1999–2000
From a release party in Stockholm to Colorado, Berlin and Ottawa, with listeners writing in from a dozen countries.
InternetBusinessPlatforms
- 3 A label deal, and no money · 2000–2002
Vinyl and an album in American record stores, a label that went under, and the sums the band set side by side.
InternetBusinessPlatforms
- 4 Robbed · 2001–2003
A studio that broadcast itself around the clock is emptied in one night, and listeners pay for the computer that replaces it.
InternetBusinessTechnology
- 5 The forum · 2003–2004
A new message board becomes the place where the band tells everything, and listeners answer.
InternetTechnology
- 6 When the platform closed · October–December 2003
The counter stops at 9,753,039, the site that carried the band since 1998 shuts, and two weeks later the band has its own.
InternetBusinessPlatformsTechnology
- 7 The Vault · 2004
Thousands of members, one home server on a 10 Mbit line, and a guestbook that tells what that meant at the other end.
InternetBusinessPlatformsTechnology
- 8 London and the 12-inch · 2004–2005
Two nights at Heaven, a record that kept being put off, and a number one on a DJ chart.
InternetBusiness
- 9 Then and now · 2006–today
A long break, a studio rebuilt and sold again, and listeners still spread across the map.
InternetBusinessPlatformsTechnology
How sources are weighed: the band's own pages from the time show what it said then, not independent proof; recollections are marked as such; calculations are labelled. All sources.