Questions regarding Ground Rules

[åpne sinn]

First, are there any?

Second, if so how do they apply to inviting new members? I admit to feeling a little bit intimidated to invite folks to this site, seeing as I'm not an artist and don't own the site. What kind of community are we looking for here? There are some artists/friends on MySpace that I think would enjoy the experience here, but I don't want to overstep my bounds on who the site creators intended this site for.

If I'm overanalyzing, just tell me to go piss up a rope. I just want to make sure I don't stretch the limits of the newfound friendships I've made both here and through MySpace.

[John Koch-Northrup]

Nutshell answer - invite anybody you want to - don't feel you're overstepping any bounds. This is a community for people who love music, creativity, art... it's both a community and our AtmoWorks website combined.

Longer answer...

We'd like to create a community of listeners and artists that love this kind of music. "This kind of music" being kind of a vague phrase - but in general I think most of us love electronic in it's many forms and ambient in it's many forms. Beatless space music to ambient to minimal techno to idm, techno, trance, and beyond.

AtmoWorks itself has been a primarily ambient or ambient groove (or fractal groove...) label for the last 7 years or so... with the changes at the label we've decided it's also a good time to expand the music we release and the artists on the label. We have artists lined up for later this year who do not write primarily ambient music - they may lean a little more towards idm or techno. We'll never lose our ambient roots - it'd be hard to with Vir Unis and me both writing! Our other partner MjDawn also has some very ambient roots as well as tons of industrial and if you don't know yet - he's a freaking amazing drummer. We also have a roster of fantastic ambient artists including Disturbed Earth and Peter James who both plan new albums in the coming months. Jonathan Hughes is an amazing ambient artist that has an e.p. planned with us in the coming months - I've heard his early mixes and they're fantastic.

Of course, we're also a music label and we'll use the site to promote what we're releasing as well was news from our partners and friends (Hypnos, dataObscura, etc...). I don't want to minimize this - of course we want to sell music! But we want to create a place that's fun to hang out on and connect with people who also love this type of music (whether it's ours or Hypnos or Steve Roach or Autechre or Monolake or Juno Reactor or Kraftwerk or Eno or Skinny Puppy .. or ... or... )

So, yes - invite more people!

The only catch right now is it'll be a good month before we really get things straightened our and the site will be changing as we go along. At some point http://www.atmoworks.com will be this site... at some point we'll drop the ads... at some point we'll update the music player for a set of full length songs... at some point we'll be planning live streaming concerts from various artists like AtmoWorks did several years ago (Vir Unis, James Johnson, The Circular Ruins, Vidna Obmana, and others participated in those earlier concerts - we hope to bring a whole new round of great artists live directly from their studios!)

It's a building process. It'll all take time - but I'm glad you've joined and want to invite more people. The more the merrier.

[John Koch-Northrup]

I probably should mention this - and we'll get an FAQ or something put together at some point. Posting of material that you don't own the copyright to can be a bit of a sticking point. I think our policy will likely be if the artists request it be taken down - we'll pull it immediately.

The majority of musicians and indie labels that would potentially be posted here are likely in the "thrilled you like the music enough to put it on youtube and spread the word". So I think your posts are fine and help the larger music community in general. It's just one of those "gray areas"...

Most people tend of view streaming music a little differently than high quality downloads - obviously we'll remove anyone that posts downloads of music that isn't their own.