The etree.org music community was created in the summer of 1998 to circulate high-quality live concert recordings. Etree.org members trade music electronically. Files are compressed using
LosslessEncoding schemes to shorten transfers enough so that anyone with a broadband connection can participate.
Our founding principles for circulating music are
Etree.org owns nothing. It is not a corporation and there certainly are no corporate offices. All work is volunteer, and all servers are independently owned and operated. The common thread is a belief among its members that music which bands permit to be traded,
should be freely traded.
Not all music is available through etree.org. This biggest difference between etree.org and other online music sites is that
Etree.org deals exclusively with legally tradeable music. We only deal with live recordings by artists that allow taping and/or free trading of their performances. The list of
TradeFriendly bands grows daily.
Trading music by artists who
don't permit it could shut etree.org down faster than you can say Napster. For that reason, and more importantly out of respect to those who create this music for us, we prohibit people from using this community to exchange music unless the artist permits doing so. Breaking this rule will get you banished from our community -- we take this very seriously. This prohibition extends to almost all commercial recordings, live performances by non-taper/trader friendly bands, and even certain shows that taper/trader-friendly bands ask us to not trade (most often because the band has released it for sale to the public).
The idea of trading high-quality audio files over the Internet was first discussed in 1996. It was initally dismissed due to the large file sizes involved in lossless compression, as opposed to much smaller, but lossy, .mp3 files. Enter etree.org and the advent of broadband. The community was formed as an offshoot of two highly regarded online trading communities:
[Sugarmegs Audio] and
[People for a Clearer Phish]. Starting with 10 people, etree.org has enjoyed ever-increasing growth and popularity. As of early 2002, there were over 12,000 users and almost 300 independently-operated file (FTP) servers.
Need to update numbers here
Thanks to the hard work and dedication of everyone in our community, etree.org continues to set the standard in lossless digital audio distribution via the Internet!
WANT TO HELP?
Etree.org is run by a hardworking community of volunteers, and we enthusiastically welcome all help. People who 'work' on etree.org include FTP server operators, mailing list administrators, web site designers,
ShnDatabase administrators and countless other people who record and seed music to the community. If you'd like to lend a hand, please read the
[FAQ], join our
MailingLists or visit our
[forums] to see where you fit in.
See also: EtreeOrgHonors