A new system of our own

Since 2021, Metalabel has focused on making it easier for creative people to cooperate. Across more than twenty releases we’ve approached this mission through a method of open experimentation that’s had us make everything from books and zines to in-person and online experiences to web platforms and legislation.

Very different projects and expressions. All in support of the same vision and goal.

This month two of our most ambitious projects ever are coming to fruition at the same time: the Artist Corporations law in Colorado, and DFOS, a new private internet with cooperation at its core. The A-Corp law will have public hearings this month in Denver, and DFOS will open more widely for the first time.

These are two wildly different projects, both ambitious and far reaching. The same group of people doing both seems unusual — but both share a radically optimistic vision: that we are more powerful than we realize; that deep changes in structure can have deep changes in outcome; and that the status quo is more movable than we think. The projects tap into our different strengths as people and turn them into something new.

When we look at DFOS, we see the foundations of a new internet.

The public internet as we know it is cooked: ads, bots, trolls, a business model deeply embedded in extraction. But the private internet — the unseen world where humans increasingly hang out — is still largely undefined. So much focus has been on scale the past fifteen years we deprioritized meaning and direct connection. DFOS imagines something very different: an unscaled internet, where we safely hang out, make money, and do things together without worry of outside eyes and scraping bots.

When we look at A-Corps, we see the foundations of a new economic system for creative people.

Right now creative people are rounding errors in the larger status quo system, reliant on entertainment lawyers translating our normal working behaviors into things our financial and legal systems can process. But there's far more of us than anyone realizes — 48% of Americans have an active creative practice today. The A-Corp creates a new foundation for creative people: access to better health care, shared ownership, better protection of their work.

When we think of both of these projects together — an internet where people are more empowered; where we have our own institutions and places to organize; new ways of making and sharing value we create — we see a new system of our own. One built not on extractive assumptions, but on an optimistic view of humans, what we want, and what we’re here to do. 

Our very first release closed with a line that becomes more true each day: As individuals our powers are limited. In groups we become stronger. Our small group — four humans brought together by their shared values — are one example of this. You might be too. We see a future with hundreds, thousands, and ultimately millions more.

These are ambitious projects. The work ahead is immense. But for the four of us cooperating together on them full-time as Metalabel Studios, these projects are our lives. Where we pour our energies everyday. It’s hard for us to think of a more meaningful way, beyond the people we love and care about, to fulfill the fire we feel inside.