Rinse FM as a pirate station and BareFiles as an archive site distributed early dubstep globally before any label releases

Rinse FM operated as a pirate radio station from tower blocks in Bow, London. Kode9 ran the FWD>> show on Rinse and discovered that by the time he got home from broadcasting, his set was already posted on barefiles.com. This unofficial archiving site, run by ‘a reclusive stoner with a couple of servers in his house,’ was broadcasting dubstep sets to the American audience during their daytime hours — when the UK sets aired 2-4 AM London time. Oris Jay: ‘the Dubstep Warz Breezeblock show aired 2-4 AM here, so during the day or early evening in the US, and that made the Americans pay attention. Basically: it made it big in America, which made it big in the UK.’ Pre-label, pre-release distribution happened through piracy.

Examples

Kode9: ‘by the time I’d got home from doing my show, the set would already be online. BareFiles had quite a big influence on how early dubstep spread overseas.‘

Assessment

Describe the mechanism by which early dubstep spread internationally before it had major label releases, identifying the specific platforms and their roles.