Welcome to the Free Music Archive (Beta)

I was a fan of Scott Soriano's Cali-based S.S. Records from the getgo. Exhibiting a full understanding of what made esoteric independent weirdo/garage/artpunk labels of the 80s and 90s so beloved, and globbing handfuls of that stuff into the S.S. aesthetic automatically set 'em apart from the myriad of Bingenheimer-bowl-cut revisionists, Blues Magoos copyist losers, and future fellators of Little Steven's cult of blah rock. Rock is certainly served up by the likes of Lamps, the Intelligence, etc., but the lygergic injection, nods to unlikely sources of influence, and even some heady dozes of Siltbreeze-friendly WTF unchartedness all run through rampantly.

Via his mailorder catalog distro, Soriano has truly scraped into unknown areas to dig up bands completely unknown that you can't discover otherwise (with a special connection to the teeming French underground), and his Z-Gun print zine is the greatest print-media gift to the scene since the halcion days of Forced Exposure. From the Metal Urbain/via gal-garage vibe of Lili Z to the sublime Chairs Missing nods of Germany's excellent Krysmopompas, to the Butthole Surfers-meets-Chrome zonk of Mexico's XYX and the alien transmissions of Los Llamarada (both of whom have played WFMU SXSW events!), S.S. comes up with the goods and it's a joy to welcome some sounds to the Free Music Archive.

Monoshock (a 90's Cali band that ranks in my book as one of the greatest trashmasters of American music period) have their singles comp on S.S. and a few Mp3s on the FMA, and that's reason enough to celebrate! Dig in!

>> S.S. Records' FMA hq

Hidden deep beneath the surface of the R3 website, guarded by a team of trained rabbits and layered under a deep film of secrecy, there is a huge pile of pristine, untouched data.

Gathered over the last 9 years, this massive store of information is a treasure trove for music fans and info-nerds alike. Here at R3Labs, we've been working hard to dig through this data. Over the next few weeks, we'll share our discoveries, and build a set of useful web-based tools that will let you do some exploring of your own. Our goal with R3Labs is to put this data to work for listeners, for bands, and for R3 itself.

What can we do with this data? Well, for starters, take a look at the above video. Each tiny coloured block represents a user listening to a track. Not surprisingly, listenership is concentrated in Canada, but you can see a lot of hot spots in the USA and elsewhere in the world (R3 seems to get a lot of play, for instance, in Cuba! Fidel? Are you listening?)

It can also give us answers to some fairly straight-forward questions:

• What is the most-played song on R3? ('Love Letter' by Stars, with 83,890 plays)
• What is song in the most user playlists? ('Weighty Ghost' by Wintersleep on 3,417 playlists).

But it also lets us dig deeper into the psyche of the R3 community and ask more in depth questions.

• Which band member is most often listed first in band profiles? (guitar)
• What about last? (the drummer)
• What province listens to the most country songs by percentage of plays? (Quebec)
• What about metal? (Alberta)
• Or Hip Hop? (Newfoundland) 

There are thousands of questions to ask, and even more answers to be found. We'll be posting all kinds of goodies in the upcoming days, but of course, we need your help:

What would you like to find out from the Radio3 data stores?

We'd love to hear your suggestions.

[R3Labs is Colin Brumelle and Jer Thorp.]