What Is Modular Music?

The four elements

1. 1

   Never finished

   The work stays alive after release. The artist can keep adding to it, at their own pace.

2. 2

   Creator-defined rules

   Who hears what, at what depth, under what conditions. Defined by the creator. Not negotiable.

3. 3

   Provenance kept

   Everything a listener reaches stays tied to the artist and the original work. The chain of authorship is intact.

4. 4

   Direct economic model

   The proposed paid model directs support to chosen artists, rather than a catalogue-wide pool. Paid commerce is not live.

What it is not

• Not Modular synthesis.

  A production technique. The word modular describes the published structure, not the production method.

• Not Remixing.

  Remixing makes a new work from source material. Modular music on LOOM22 is listening within the artist’s rules; the lineage leads back to the artist.

• Not Streaming.

  Streaming delivers a finished artifact passively. Modular music delivers a decision-space.

Questions

• What is modular music?

  Modular Music is a term coined by LOOM22 for music that stays alive after release. A modular track is made of parts the artist chooses to open, so a listener can go inside the music instead of only playing it through — always on the artist’s terms. It is a way of listening, not a production technique. The artist stays the author of every way in, and the lineage leads back to them.

• How is modular music different from streaming?

  Streaming delivers a finished artifact passively. The listener receives what the platform decides to serve. Modular music delivers a decision-space: the artist’s work, governed by the artist’s rules, entered by the listener. In the proposed model, support is allocated directly to a specific artist — not into a shared catalogue pool.

• How is modular music different from modular synthesis?

  Modular synthesis is a production technique — hardware or software modules used to generate sound. Modular music on LOOM22 is a way of publishing and listening. The word modular describes the structure of the published work, not how it was made. A track made in Ableton can be modular music. A track made on a Eurorack can be modular music. The production method is irrelevant.

• How is modular music different from remixing?

  Remixing usually makes a new work from source material, with new authorship. Modular music on LOOM22 is built differently: the listener moves within what the artist chose to open, within rules the artist set, and the lineage leads back to the artist. Whether a particular saved or rendered output has its own status depends on the output and the rights involved; LOOM22’s Terms set out who holds what.

• What platforms support modular music?

  LOOM22 coined modular music as a way of listening and built the first platform around it — music that stays alive after release, rules the artist authors, provenance that stays with the artist, and support designed to go directly from listener to artist.

• Is a modular track ever finished?

  No. A modular track is a living thing. The artist can keep adding to it after release, at their own pace and by their own choice. The release date is not a ceiling. It is the opening.

• Who decides how far a listener can go?

  The artist, always. The artist decides what opens, to whom, and when. Those rules are part of the work, and the platform enforces them. The artist keeps 100% of their authorship and IP; their audio is never used to train AI that makes music, and no other training use or licensing happens without their explicit consent.