THE HISTORY OF SUGARMEGS
OK, the History of SugarMegs as I have been able to piece it together. Thanks to Peter for his help with the sketchy bits.
IN THE BEGINNING
It all started with the Grateful Dead's policy of allowing people to tape and trade their live performances. They stipulated (and still do) that, as long as NO MONEY EVER CHANGED HANDS, they would allow taping and trading of their live shows. The fact that no money could be exchanged, even for postage, gave rise to the oft-heard "B&P" (Blanks and Postage) Exchange. In exchange for blank media, and enough postage to return the recorded media, one person would agree to copy the show for another. This method is used (for a variety of media) even to this day.
In addition to simple "one for one" trades at shows, people started "Tape trees" that would allow each person to make a copy and pass it to the next person through the mail. In order to keep generational loss down, higher ups in analog trees would make many copies. There were also many reel to reel traders in those days. Those with reels were always at the top of the tree, passing along cassette masters. These were organized primarily through paper mailing lists (this was the 1970's after all) that people subscribed to through friends and at shows. A few other bands began to allow taping as well and a fledgling tape trading "community" was born that later moved to the Internet and lives to this day.
The issue of generational loss was made less important with the advent of the consumer DAT (Digital Audio Tape). The DAT allowed, provided the user did it correctly, for an exact digital copy (a clone) to be made of the original recording. When cloning, you could make as many copies as you liked without any loss of sound quality. The DAT trading trees flourished and the quality of shows in circulation got an order of magnitude better.
GOING DIGITAL
At the same time, the PC revolution was happening all over the world. People experimented with putting these recordings onto their computers. The problem was that wav files, the format PC's used to play audio, took up a HUGE amount of hard drive space at a time when most PC's had very little to spare. As the price of hard drives came down, that would be less of a problem, but that wouldn't happen for years.
Around 1996, the MP3 codec (compression/decompression) was created. This codec allowed the huge wav files to be compressed to a size that would fit on most PC's. Hard drives were still relatively small by comparison to today's behemoths, but it reduced the size needed to store music by up to a factor of ten, (10% of original size) and made digital storage feasible. Around that time also, modems were approaching speeds of 28,800 bps. At this speed, sending large files was a more realistic idea.
SUGARMEGS IS BORN
Then, as happens occasionally with all things Dead related, a happy accident--a miracle if you will--occurred. Our illustrious founder, Peter Hedeman, tells it in his own words:
"Sugarmegs got started because my place of business (Jeff Dell Film Service) had participated in a beta test of a SPRINT teleconferencing product. The product worked via a t1 line that at the time retailed for about $6000/month. Once the beta test ended I noticed that the t1 was still alive and totally exploited this by streaming Real Audio to 60 listeners at a time (from a Mac!). The cool thing was that whenever the T1 went down SPRINT (Southern Pacific Railroad INTernal communications company fyi) customer service would call me and say something to the tune of "We are sorry your line is down and we are working on having it up again soon". I would say..."Thank You" and hang up quickly!"
Peter also came up with the brilliant idea of trading his Dead shows over the Internet. I realize this seems commonplace now, but remember this was 1996. He had been publishing his tape trading list on the nascent World Wide Web for some time already. While it was time consuming, you could conceivably move an entire show in a relatively short time (8-10 hours). He decided to use the FTP protocol, which had freeware server/client utilities available and was more efficient than HTTP, to allow people to browse his collection and download what they wanted.
As far as I know, he was the first on the Internet to trade MP3 files. An amazing claim in light of the explosion of trading that we are experiencing all over the world today. He could very well be called the "Father of MP3 trading", though I doubt he would appreciate the title. ;-)
Somewhere in there he started the SugarMegs mailing list. He gradually expanded his web page to what we see today and encouraged people to start the "mirror sites" to increase the number of people who had access to the music. He called this the "Electric Tree", and indeed, it is reminiscent of the tape trading trees.
What started as a collection of Grateful Dead shows, expanded to include thousands of shows from hundreds of bands. The term "Jamband" was coined around this time and encompasses most of these stylistically diverse but improvisationally oriented musical groups.
Peter's job closed and SugarMegs lost use of its T1. There was a brief "set break" at that time. Then Microsoft (yes, that Microsoft) came along and offered to pay for site hosting provided Peter take down all the Real Audio files and put up asf files instead. No brainer there. All the real audio files were retired to ftp and asf files were slowly posted. That was the long jammin' "Set Two" that we all enjoyed so much. Unfortunately, Microsoft withdrew it's support for SugarMegs as of 1-1-2000. So "Set Two" closed and the future of SugarMegs was uncertain once more.
A web hosting company called Promark USA stepped up to donate a small amount of bandwidth, enough that mirror site operators and uploaders could still get to the FTP archives. Another company, Mylink.net, donated the use of its network to stream the Real Audio files once more, and "Set Three" began!
At the same time, a new company, called OnShare.com, was looking for a way to test their new http file sharing service. Since Peter had a "few" files he could share, they worked out an arrangement for Sugarmegs files to be shared through OnShare's system. Need bandwidth tests OnShare? Be careful what you ask for! After a few hiccups, the folks at OnShare.com got things flowing, and that's where Sugarmegs stands today. Files are being added every day and the collection just keeps growing. Peter just added a fourth 47 GB drive in July, bringing Sugarmegs to a whopping 180+ GB of music! Not bad for a non profit gig that started from a kid's tape collection.
"SON" OF SUGARMEGS
The down side to the MP3 format is that it is a compromise. To compress files to a size that is easy to transport via modem, it discards some of the information. This is referred to as a "lossy" compression scheme. This information is supposed to be the part that human ears don't hear anyway, but that doesn't always happen in practice.
Enter the Shorten format. As Shorten -often referred to by it's file extension, .shn- gained popularity due to it's "lossless" compression, a new branch of the Electric Tree grew. The compression ratio is not as high as MP3 (around 50% of original size) but, just like DAT clones, Shorten files are an exact digital copy of the original.
With the introduction of consumer broadband, moving these large files has become possible for more people. According to Peter Hedeman, one day in 1997 Steve Hormell came by Peter's place of business to visit SugarMegs while in town for a phish show. He suggested that instead of using the (original) url eyes.jeffdell.com for SugarMegs, the name should be registered and that he could serve it for SugarMegs as he worked at an ISP. Peter promptly registered the name sugarmegs.org and Steve started serving the DNS for it. Steve went on to found etree, a community similar to Sugarmegs, but with the mission of serving shows in the Shorten format.
Etree has grown to over 5,000 members and has long ago eclipsed SugarMegs in size. A situation analogous to the early analog tape trees has evolved, with etree being the equivalent of the reel to reel traders and sugarmeggers the cassette traders. Etree is frequently the source of some of the finest sugarmegs mp3 files.
The relationship between the members of the two groups has not always been totally harmonious. Zealots on both sides occasionally try to stir up the "Format Wars", preaching the merits of one over the other. However, the founders of each group, and indeed many members, still work on "joint" endeavors (I couldn't resist) and the more clear headed among us realize that there is a place for both file formats. Etree is a forum for the true audiophile, for whom perfect digital copies are a must. Sugarmegs serves those who are more casual collectors, or who don't have access to the computer resources necessary to collect and trade shn files. Of course, there will always be crossover between the groups. Many Sugarmeggers have "dual citizenship" and many etree members are closet "Smeggers" as well. Let's hope it stays that way.
After all,
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC!
Chris Black
00-08-25
blackbox.sugarmegs.org