Well, this is a long time in coming. I wrote this dissertation back in 2007 for my Masters in Music - and it earned me a Distinction, which was nice! I’d planned to pubish it, in a book that one of my supervisors was putting together, but that never came off and besides, I was a bit cagey about releasing this to the world at the time. For context, I wrote this in the white heat of my mid-20s musicology phase and it’s full of pompous verbiage and labyrinthine grammar - not to mention all the self-righteous fervour of a chipmusic fanatic and tracker historian.

It was cited by Anders Carlsson (goto80) in his own Masters dissertation and, since that was widely spread, lots of people have asked me over the years for a copy while doing their own research. And the embarrassing truth is…I lost it! I couldn’t find a digital or paper copy of my dissertation for years, but spurred by a request from a Japanese chipmusic enthusiast last month, I’ve managed to track down the final version of the document and after a few minor fixes that slipped through the net before submission, I’ve turned it into a PDF which I’m sharing here.

So after almost 8 years, I’m a self-employed musician, husband, homeowner and father of two with (I think it’s safe to say) no further ambitions in the field of academia. This is very much an artefact of my younger self and while I’m always happy to chat with people about how I felt then about this stuff, or how I feel now, I’m no longer an active part of that discourse and I just hope that it might be able to help others with their research, or just exist as a curio; a little glimpse of one man’s little glimpse of demoscene history. Albeit a rather dense one. But hey, at least it’s got a couple of pictures to look at…

I’ve never released my academic writing before, but consider it Creative Commons licensed - it can be freely shared, but not modified or distributed for money or via any system that requires payment/subscription. Oh, and it should always be attributed to me. Feel free to cite it, but I’d appreciate it if you could let me know - not least because it’d be nice to read your work! Best way to reach me is @echolevel on Twitter, or by email via my main site.

Here’s the doc:

http://echolevel.co.uk/clientfiles/Brendan_Ratliff-Why_did_freely_shared_tracked_music_in_the_1990s_computer_demoscene_survive_the_arrival_of_the_MP3_age.pdf

That link’s currently dead, so here’s a Gdocs link until I get it fixed:

Why did freely shared, tracked music in the 1990’s computer demoscene survive the arrival of the MP3 age? by Brendan Ratliff