Our story:

Cornslaw Industries was founded in an apartment in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2003. Cornslawcom was launched in the fall of 2004. It was somewhat forcibly moved to Bowling Green, Ohio in 2005. Cornslawcom was somewhat forcibly moved to Cornslawnet in November of 2006. In 2007, Cornslaw Industries moved 20 miles up Route 75 to Toledo, OH. In the summer of 2009, Cornslaw Industries will be moving to parts unknown.

Our “story”:

We live and die by our motto: “puttin’ stuff on the web that wasn’t there before.” As the old tale goes, we actually battled three much larger and scarier multi-national conglomerates for its power and won triumphantly and with much celebration.

Our schedule:

We are emotionally and temporally reliant upon an academic calendar. We tend to have roughly four spurts of output corresponding to regular breaks: Late December/Early January, Late February/Early March, Mid May, and some other time during the late summer and/or mid-fall.

Our contributors:

1. Active Roster: Our archive roster is largely made up of friends and friends of friends. There are very few people involved in releasing their music primarily through Cornslaw who someone closely associated with us doesn’t personally know in the “meat world.”

2. Compilation Participants: On occasion, the Cornslaw Industries Board of Directors gets a great idea like putting out a tribute album before the actual album is released) and seeks contributors to participate. We venture into our vast resource of digital social networking to find like-minded artists to contribute. We love them and consider them dear friends following our collaboration. Visit the contact page for more information

3. Archival Releases: Aside from being so unbelievable progressive that even we don’t think its cool yet, we also like to dive into the past (like Jethro Tull) and attempt to bring past material into the digital age. Again, most of the material is related to us in some way.

Why the music is free:

We are a net.label (we like the little period in the middle thing) and as a net.label, the music and related media included on cornslaw dot net and made available through Cornslaw Industries is free to listen to, download, consume, listen to, distribute, and derive anew. The “songs,” the written stuff–the art, the creation, the “property”–remains in the ownership and control of the original creator (interpret that as the recording artist, the songwriter, the covered artist, god, whatever), but the 1s & 0s are your to do with what you want. We have not so much unvalued the music or videos (a lot of it is kind of “ok”) as we have removed what we saw as the number one hindrance in the distribution of this stuff to “you.” We removed the problems that arise when you, a consumer, is faced with the decision of whether to pay money for something or not. You don’t have to pay, just take it, listen to it or watch it. If you don’t like it, move along with your day, sorry for the bother. If you do like it, tell a friend. It’s pretty simple, really. Creative Commons is good.