The defining moment of any cult following is its assumption of a distinct persona. Memorable examples of devotees include Trekkies, Deadheads, and electronic music's Ravers. A level of fanaticism occurred within the Propellerhead community as users began referring to themselves as "ReBirthers," and company employees as "the Props" or "the Pheads." This camaraderie has only grown through the years. Another vital part of the ReBirth community was the sharing of song files. A ReBirth song file is very compact, usually no more than 100 kilobytes, and was easily emailed between users. It not only provided a venue for showcasing artist talent, but lent others invaluable learning material. People dissected and analyzed the songs, learning about their production methodologies. At worst case, they provided templates for plagiarization. Early masters of ReBirth, like Alex M., Frank Chotai, T.G.Virus, and Action Jackson, set fairly high standards of musicianship. Even established artists such as IFPI-Grammy winner Antiloop contributed ReBirth tracks. As song exchanges, listening, and feedback became the norm, ReBirthers formed websites where people could share their creations. One of the earliest websites was called Rotorkopf. Already a Tracker community for Buzz users, Rotorkopf had the infrastructure in place for file transfers. At the time, obtaining a domain name and building a website was a serious commitment for hobbyists, so Rotorkopf provided a valuable arena for song sharing. Another website, ReBirth-Online (later known as "Planet ReBirth"), even offered listeners the opportunity to rate songs online in virtual battles. Several of these sites have since disappeared, but their impact on the community prompted Propellerhead to archive user songs on the company website. It wasn't long before ReBirthers started dialogs directly with each other and pooled their talents. One of the most notable groups was Elektriches Descent (ElekD). Led by Shazib Malik ('The Storm'), ElekD formed a creative coalition comprised of users throughout Europe. Besides their solid track production, ElekD presented their works with album cover images and accompanied by stylish poetry. Another group, Computer Controlled, focused on the development and archival of modified versions of ReBirth, known as "Mods." Computer Controlled started on a peer-to-peer server hosted on a 56k modem connection. It was through this chat and file sharing system that users MacJunkie and Peff created the TechnoBox TB-909e, one of the earliest Mods. Despite the fact that modifying the application was an obvious violation of the software licensing agreement, the Props welcomed the concept: I recall all of us standing around a Mac and looking at the new version of ReBirth that someone had painfully put together from a cracked ReBirth 1.0 with a resource editor (I think it was the TechnoBox). The words "sue the bastards" were hanging in the air when Marcus said, "Wow! That is really cool! We should put it on our web site!" ... I don't know if it was a stroke of genius, or if something had just caressed his ego in a very pleasurable way, but that phrase was, in a sense, the start of the ReBirth Mod scene. Part 4: ReBirth Mods