Type of site | Module file digital library |
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Available in | English |
Founder(s) | Morgan Green Patrick Nelson Chris Tchou Robert Watson |
URL | modarchive |
Commercial | No, accepts donations |
Launched | February 1996 |
Current status | Active |
Content license | Public domain or Creative Commons licenses, if mentioned by the uploader [1] |
Demoscene |
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Concepts |
Alternative demo platforms |
Current parties |
Websites |
Magazines |
Software |
The Mod Archive is a website dedicated to the indexing and archival of playable music module files. It allows anyone to upload modules, and provides charts, reviews and ratings of music files based on a community effort.
The Mod Archive was established in February 1996 as a place for tracker artists to upload their work. [2] Since then, the site has emerged into being a community for artists and module enthusiasts.
In an effort to make the website more dynamic, the community part of the site was added around 2000, in the form of message boards and an indexed search engine. Having lacked proper maintenance since around 2004, however, the site went through a complete reimplementation, beginning in November 2005 and leaving private beta in August 2006. In 2007, the site moved onto dedicated hardware to cope with a sudden increase in popularity following these improvements. [2]
Since 2006, the site has also provided a method of doing bulk downloads of archive files via BitTorrent.
Having moved from a sponsored, shared platform in 2007, the website currently resides on a dedicated server. As a result of the increased costs related to running on dedicated hardware, the site seeks the help of the community in covering the running costs.
Since anyone can upload files to the website, all uploaded files have to go through a manual screening process where they are checked for integrity and quality by site staff.
Reusing the tracker music files published on the website requires the song's author permission. [3]
ModArchive was mentioned in the PC music freeware roundup in Sound on Sound magazine. [4]
ModArchive (v3.1) was featured as Site of the Month in Computer Music magazine. [5]
A music tracker is a type of music sequencer software for creating music. The music is represented as discrete musical notes positioned in several channels at chronological positions on a vertical timeline. A music tracker's user interface is traditionally number based. Notes, parameter changes, effects and other commands are entered with the keyboard into a grid of fixed time slots as codes consisting of letters, numbers and hexadecimal digits. Separate patterns have independent timelines; a complete song consists of a master list of repeated patterns.
Scream Tracker is a tracker. It was created by Psi, one of the founders of the Finnish demogroup Future Crew. It was written in C and assembly language.
Future Crew was a Finnish demogroup that created PC demos and software, active mostly between 1987 and 1994.
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Orb was a freeware streaming software that enabled users to remotely access all their personal digital media files including pictures, music, videos and television. It could be used from any Internet-enabled device, including laptops, pocket PC, smartphones, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii video game consoles.
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S3M is a module file format, the successor to the STM format used by the original Scream Tracker. Both formats are based on the original MOD format used on the Amiga computer.
Impulse Tracker is a multi-track music tracker. Originally released in 1995 by Jeffrey Lim as freeware with commercial extensions, it was one of the last tracker programs for the DOS platform.
AIMP is a freeware audio player for Windows and Android, originally developed by Russian developer Artem Izmaylov. It supports a variety of audio codecs, and includes tools to convert audio files and edit their metadata. It also has the capability of installing user-made skins and plugins. After its release, it has been well received by different parties.
μTorrent, or uTorrent, is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client owned and developed by Rainberry, Inc. The "μ" in its name comes from the SI prefix "micro-", referring to the program's small memory footprint: the program was designed to use minimal computer resources while offering functionality comparable to larger BitTorrent clients such as Vuze or BitComet. μTorrent became controversial in 2015 when many users unknowingly accepted a default option during installation which also installed a cryptocurrency miner.
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