An Internet band (also sometimes called a virtual band or online band) is a musical group whose members collaborate online through broadband by utilizing a content management system and local digital audio workstations. The work is sometimes released under a Creative Commons license, so musicians can share their 'samples' to create collaborative musical expressions for noncommercial purposes without ever meeting face to face.
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Internet bands, also known as virtual bands or online bands[1], came into commonplace on the internet in the early 2000s, as emailing systems, computer software and audio files became easier to manage, better quality, and more accessible. While online bands may differ in many aspects they all have one thing in common; band members collaborate on music via the internet.
The advantages of joining an online band include the ability to collaborate with musicians, vocalists, audio engineers, etc. who reside in any part of the world with internet access. Also, since many online bands do not perform or record in "real-time", it allows members to record their track (their part of a collaboration) at their leisure.[2]
With the development of Internet musicians came Internet session artists, Internet music teachers and Internet record producers. There are numerous people over the Internet that offer teaching services for a fee. Others, often very talented musicians and producers in high demand or people with an instrument that is expensive to gear up to record properly, charge fees for high quality tracks.
Due to all of this music floating around on the internet, websites have been established by a variety of organizations to host and distribute this music. There is a large range of different policies, examples being SoundClick and AcidPlanet.
For online music collaboration a server based system helps to coordinate the work for music projects with more than two musicians involved. Most platforms provide a virtual space to upload recorded music files and link them in an additional community formed website.
Each musician usually needs to record to a click track or metronome and upload the instrument or vocals for the song independently. Then a designated internet music producer can edit for timing and tightness between all tracks, arrange, optimize and mix all instruments together and do a final mastering process to get a complete song out of single tracks.