Low bit
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Low bit (short for low bitrate, also known as lobit) is a musical aesthetic characterized by lossy data compression artifacts caused by encoding songs at low bitrates. Artists making low-bit music believe that if a song is good, it can be appreciated at any bitrate or on any speakers.
[edit] Overview
The low-bit style emerged as an avant-garde reaction to the perceived bitrate snobbery in the organized music piracy (on peer-to-peer networks) and net label scenes. It also shares a strong do-it-yourself ethic with punk ideology.
Low-bit music is distributed primarily through net labels. Unlike most net labels, many low-bit labels do not focus on representing a single music genre. Instead, the catalog of each label reveals the personal tastes of the curator.
Because of the small file sizes of low-bitrate encodes, it is possible to download an entire EP from a low-bit label in the same time it would take to download one song from a standard net label. This makes low-bitrate releases accessible to listeners who have only a dialup modem, as well as conserving space on a webserver.
[edit] Active low-bitrate labels
- 20kbps - godfather of lobit
- abulia concepts - lowbitrate netlabel from northern Germany
- fashion proof - new face from the east coast of America
- floppyswop - all releases fit on a 1.44mb floppy disk
- gainlad - playful chip music and techno out of south America
- mp3death - run by a net label pioneer who started broke bunnie in 1996
- NORTHAMERICANHARDCORE - punk rock, noise music, hardcore techno, and other raw sounds
- stars in rehab - run by an old school Demoscene member
