TorrentFreak

• Ernesto
• January 8, 2009
• 35
• bittorrent,
  CXCR6,
  netlabel
• Print

An increasing number of musicians are experimenting with giving away their music for free on BitTorrent. This trend has led to the formation of a new Netlabel, CXCR6, which specifically targets the BitTorrent community with new album releases. We got in touch with its founder about his motivation to promote free music.

Unlike traditional record labels, CXCR6 doesn’t work with contracts, nor does it claim copyright to the music of the artists that join. It’s a non-profit operation whose goal is to get the music out in the open by distributing it to as many people as possible. That’s where BitTorrent comes in.

The label distributes its artist’s albums on well know BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, Demonoid, What.cd, Waffles.fm and Indietorrents – and doesn’t mind when they leak to even more sites. TorrentFreak spoke with Lloyd Cox, one of the founders of CXCR6, who is a musician himself. We asked him how the label operates, and why he feels BitTorrent is such a great way to share music.

Lloyd told us that CXCR6 is more like a collective, although it functions as a label. “The label works because it’s basically pooling resources. Under a ‘label’ we essentially share any promotion we get, because everything comes back to CXCR6. So if one of the artists blows-up, the other artists get more promotion and downloads through it,” he explained.

The main purpose of the label is to promote the artists in any way possible, free of charge. “As well as just promoting the music, we also send copies for review to various sites and publications, general ‘label’ things like that. We don’t sell anything at CXCR6 but you can donate directly to the PayPal of the artists themselves,” Lloyd said.

CXCR6 is just starting as a Netlabel, but they already have 5 artists on board. Three of them – Xihilisk, Slicepad and Severn – have posted their albums already. The other two musicians are expected to follow soon. Lloyd already has some experience with BitTorrent as a promotional tool. Last year he released one of his albums exclusively on Demonoid.

This experience was one of the things that encouraged him to motivate others to join in the concept. “Some artists I’ve found make incredible music, but aren’t getting heard by anywhere near the amount of people they deserve. With CXCR6, I can potentially get that music to a ton of people,” Lloyd said.

“I’ve been sharing my own music on BT for a few years now, but the precursor to CXCR6 was organizing a couple of unsigned music compilations on What.cd. They’ve had nearly 30,000 downloads in a few months, and that made me realize that using BT is the right way to promote new music. I don’t know many other ways you could get 30k downloads of some compilations by a load of artists no-one has heard of.”

“BitTorrent provides the ultimate convenience,” Lloyd explained. “You can try something new, for free, and if you don’t like it, you can just delete it. If you really like something, you can donate to the artist, buy one of their CDs or go see them live to show your support. And who doesn’t like getting something for nothing?”

We have to agree with him there, don’t you?

Unlike traditional record labels, CXCR6 doesn’t work with contracts, nor does it claim copyright to the music of the artists that join. It’s a non-profit operation whose goal is to...