Internet band

Social networking sites have gained a large number of users because many aspects of society revolve around computers and the Internet. The music industry itself has undergone this change as well. People are using iTunes, YouTube and MySpace Music to share their music and communicate with others. Adaptively, artists and record labels can utilize Web sites and file sharing sites to spread their music. Musicians who use the Internet can also form bands online.

Internet bands became popular in the early 2000s when music technology, file sharing and collaboration software became more prevalent on the Internet. While the extent of collaboration between bands may vary, an Internet band identifies as a band whose members collaborate on music projects via the Internet.

A growing number of websites offer people the opportunity to compose music online. They marry social networking with music mixing and uploading technology. Users decide what projects they wish to add their special touches to and how actively they want to get involved.[3][4]

The advantages of joining an online band include the ability to collaborate with musicians, vocalists, audio engineers, etc. who reside in any part of the world with Internet access. Also, since many online bands do not perform or record in "real-time", it allows members to record their track (their part of a collaboration) at their leisure.[4]

Online music collaboration is an Internet-based system designed to help coordinate online music projects. Most platforms provide a virtual space to upload recorded music files, a community forum where members can offer feedback or make alterations to the uploaded music.

Each musician usually needs to record to a click track or metronome and upload the instrument or vocals for the song independently. Then a designated Internet music producer can edit for timing and tightness between all tracks, arrange, optimize and mix all instruments together and do a final mastering process to get a complete song out of single tracks.

Internet-based music collaboration can be done by individuals who never form one permanent band. The Playing for Change Foundation is a musical charity that releases music recorded by musicians from all around the globe, only some of whom have gone on to play together live. Even more decentralized collaboration happens between YouTube users; one Cracked columnist praised the cover of the Game of Thrones theme performed by violinist Jason Yang and guitarist and sound engineer Roger Lima and directed by Paolo Dy.

And these people have never met. The Internet isn't just causing collaborations between people who would otherwise never have got together, it's creating collaborations between people who still haven't got together. There's just so much creativity being uploaded that we've reached collaboration critical-mass, where mixes can be generated across the world with nothing but HTTP. The result is a "super-feit" -- a copy superior to the original.[6]

• subatomicglue was one of the first internet bands, forming in the late 1990s.
• The ClipBandits, known as "the first Internet band", collaborated without ever having met each other,[7] were featured on ABC World News and Good Morning America, and ultimately met and performed on the Tyra Banks Show.[8]
• Infant Annihilator; a three-member deathcore band; two instrumentalists living in Kingston upon Hull, UK and vocalist living in Florida, US. Their original vocalist was from Indiana, US and recorded his vocals for their debut album without ever meeting the other two members.[9]
• Red Abbott; a Boston based band that collaborated exclusively through email on their debut album.[10]
• Superorganism's members originally met up in online forums and through mutuals before eventually meeting up in real life.[11]

• Virtual band