Yes indeed, this week’s announcement is the return of free tunes on TYFTH, after being cryogenically frozen for a year or so. I’m really happy that the account is alive again, but things have obviously changed a lot in the scene since it first started. These days there are plenty of labels doing a very professional job of releasing new music for free, and so my original ambitious plans have been scaled back – that particular Horse has long since bolted.

I reckon there’s still a place for tunes on TYFTH though, and from now on the SoundCloud will hopefully be performing two main roles. The first is to be a place for up-and-coming producers to get some extra publicity – the account already has quite a decent following, which now combines with infinite downloads and strength in numbers among all the other free tunes, making it a nice stepping stone to the ‘real’ labels for new artists. The second role is to make some older tracks available that otherwise would be forgotten, starting tonight with the excellent Whipped remix/mashup.

It should be clear already, but the account absolutely isn’t meant as a competitor to any of the other free labels out there, rather as a ‘training ground’ before making the step up to better things/an archive for older material. That doesn’t mean the tracks won’t be worth listening to, as I’ll be aiming to keep the standard high, even if it’ll be significantly lowered by any of my own tunes that end up there.

Many thanks to Tyranoid & Strongstream for starting us off again with Whipped, a slightly edited mashup with the Substanced remix from many years ago. I have a few other tracks that were originally submitted back when the account went into hibernation, so there’ll be one or two of them going online every day or so next week. After that it’ll be dependent on submissions, so do feel free to get in touch if you think you might have something that fits the rambling description above.