| Active from | 1997 — 1998 |
Dimension Music began life in 1996 as dmusic.com, one of the first websites dedicated to independent music and the then-new mp3 format.
In January 1997 DMusic began ripping and releasing albums via IRC FServe bots. The group briefly entered a partnership with RNS in 1998, primarily due to the significant bot network (named Outsiderz) affiliated with DMusic and which was used for organised attacks (and later defense) on IRC. Also involved in the merger was the group CPS, who ran the majority of the aforementioned IRC bots. Some of the targeted channels included #mp3s, #mp3dcc and for a brief period, #mp3. The FServe bots and IRC channels were also utilised as traffic drivers to dmusic.com, leading to it becoming one of the most popular mp3/music websites of the era.
The partnership between RNS and DM disintegrated in 1998 after dmusic.com became profitable and consequently the primary source of attention for the admins. RNS remained affiliated with the Outsiderz botnet and the IRC FServes no longer pointed to DMusic.
DMusic also operated an academy - DMusic Academy - which taught people the best and fastest ways to rip/encode and organise the resulting files so that they would fit appropriately into the DM network. Guides appeared on dmusic.com and meant that compared to other groups of the era, files were far more standardised in quality and filenaming.
The website remains live to this day though any involvement with mp3 distribution has long been eradicated.