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Pre-internet dance music spread through DJ mix-tape cassette networks, copy of a copy, reaching thousands weekly

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Before digital distribution, house spread through a physical cassette network: DJs recorded their sets and the tapes were copied repeatedly (‘a copy of a copy of a copy’) across a city. Jefferson describes Frankie Knuckles’ tapes reaching about 10,000 people a week. This mechanism let an unreleased track travel: Move Your Body moved from Chicago clubs to Knuckles’ network, to Larry Levan in New York, to Alfredo in Ibiza, to UK DJs and journalists, all before any commercial pressing. The teachable point is transferable: scenes built audiences and broke records through peer-to-peer physical copying long before online sharing did the same job.

Examples

Move Your Body spread with no release: Ron Hardy’s plays, then Sleazy D handing Knuckles a copy, then Knuckles’ ~10,000-person tape network, then Levan in NY, then Ibiza, then UK press, all from duplicated cassettes and reels.

Assessment

Describe how an unreleased track could reach international DJs through a cassette network. What does this chain reveal about how scenes built audiences before the internet?

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Sources

“Frankie had like this network he would make tapes of his sets and the whole city would get him like it would be a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy right but about a”
corpus · marshall-jefferson-breaks-down-move-your-body-and-the-histor · chunk 2

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