What the world needs now is groupcore

“Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today people are born individuals and have to find their communities.” — K-Hole, “Youth Mode,”

The old internet is dead. A public space built on shared protocols and open APIs so powerful they created an immense universe that overtook the world that birthed it. 

In its place: the new internet, built on the foundations of the old. Once public, now locked down on corporate servers, scraped for ads and AI, regurgitated as models to generate all forms of expression, no effort required. A regime so immense we struggle to see how we will stop it from overtaking us.

In the new internet the role of humans is fundamentally altered. From its inventors to its users to its customers to its producers and now its private citizen-serfs, all the while redefining what it means to be a member of society and which societies we belong to at all.

Coping strategies

One response to these changes is COPE, in the traditional sense: soothing ourselves through change. We accept what’s here and try to make the most of it.

Another response is COPE, in the internet sense: false bravado that perpetuates our beliefs in the face of contrary experiences. Puff out our chests big enough and we never have to confront the truth.

A third response, harder, is DIVERGE. Not blindly going with the dominant change, but diverging to make our own change in response to how we experience what’s around us. 

Metalabel is a project pursuing this third path.

Groupcore

This work has not, we admit, always been easy to explain. “What is Metalabel?” has been a frustratingly hard question to answer for much of our existence.

But “Introducing Metalabel,” our first release and manifesto, closed with what our core has always been: “As individuals our powers are limited. In groups we become exponentially stronger.”

That’s what Metalabel has always been about: making creative groups of people more capable. We’ve since come to see our focus more clearly, with a new word and category to define it once and for all.

Metalabel makes groupcore (noun): software, tools, economics, spaces, and ideas that help creative people cooperate.

Groupcore defines all 20-plus releases by the Metalabel Studio:

• Financial tools to make group profit-sharing easy (Splits and Treasuries)
• Social tools to make collaboration accessible (Chorus, Lonely Writer’s Club)
• Software to make co-releasing simple for creative people (The Metalabel release platform)
• Writing and media that explores groupcore strategies (New Creative Era podcast, After the Creator Economy zine)
• A legal structure to make creative groups economically more powerful (Artist Corporations)

Our desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves defines all of these projects. Across mediums and formats they share the same purpose: groupcore.

Dark Forest Operating System

This is especially true of a new product we’re releasing in limited beta later this year: the Dark Forest Operating System (DFOS), a new private internet for creative groups to hang, plan, and make meaning and money together.

The open web is no longer a viable home for creative work or community. People post less in public spaces because the downsides outweigh the positives (trolls, scraping, training models, an increasingly dead internet). DFOS gives groups the ability to come together, share ideas and projects, and operate with aligned economics in private worlds of their own.

The Dark Forest OS will open in limited beta later this year. To pre-register your own space, visit DFOS.com.

The groupcore vision

The first era of the internet empowered individuals to discover and become themselves online. This next era will give groups those same powers and much more.

The same way corporations shaped much of culture over the past hundred years, Dark Forests and other internet-aligned groups will shape the world in years to come.

​​Getting there isn't a one-shot. It’s a journey with many steps, not by one person or group on their own. We’ve taken four of them so far:

1. Build a groupcore label to release software and ideas. (Metalabel Studio — live)
2. Use that label to release tools that help groups form, release work, and share profits. (Metalabel.com — live)
3. Use the lessons of those groups to introduce a new legal structure for creative people. (Artist Corporations — in progress)
4. While doing above, provide a new private internet where groups can meet and make meaning and money together in worlds of their own. (DFOS — coming soon)

We said it before and we'll say it again: As individuals our powers are limited. In groups we become stronger. With groupcore, we can become stronger than we ever imagined.

Explore our groupcore catalogue and DFOS for more.