The History of Kazoomzoom | The History of the Kazoomzoom Design

The History of Kazoomzoom

In 2008, a mailing list and website were created on the Oddio Overplay website to develop an online recording label offering free family-friendly music. The original name for the community was Oddio Kids, which regrettably sounds like I Hate Kids in some languages, and so it was quickly renamed Peppers. A core group of about 30 people were really excited by the idea and played a big part in shaping the first netlabel for children which they named Kazoomzoom.

Most of those 30 creative people had communicated and collaborated before on projects such as the 365 Days Project, Cool and Strange Music! Magazine, The Exotica List, The Exotica Ring, Oddio Overplay, Snuggles Collective, Song Fight!, Splusp, and the pioneer netlabel Comfort Stand Recordings.

The Comfort Stand project lasted for three years. It is considered historically important as one of the first free netlabels to offer music that was not exclusively electronic and as an advocate of the relatively new Creative Commons licensing. The netlabel was built by Otis Fodder (The Bran Flakes) to house a 2-CD free compilation, Two Zombies Later, created by several Exotica List members. Many of those creators joined Otis in the netlabel project as artists and staff.

Several of the Comfort Stand Recordings alumni continued to work with other labels. Staffer and musician Marco Kalnenek (Weirdomusic) went on to found the prolific WM Recordings (Internet Archive mirror), a free and commercial label working to support a broad variety of musicians. His label released about 130 albums all with Creative Commons licensing. Most of the catalog is still available today.

Fellow Comfort Stand staffer Katya Oddio suggested another netlabel to offer upbeat and family-friendly music. Her Oddio Overplay project, launched in 1994, was an early promoter of musicians sharing their work online in a time before modern bandwidth capabilities and hosting services, a time when it was actually hard for artists to get their works out there. Oddio Overplay offered new ears to artists who shared.

As the Kazoomzoom community was growing, a compilation of original music was growing, too. On July first, 2008, Kazoomzoom.com launched their site and their first compilation. A Smile for Timbuctu, The Bran Flakes, Brody, Katya Oddio, Kazoo Funk Orchestra, Lee Rosevere (Happy Puppy Records), Meneer Jan (Jan Turkenburg), Francis McPurvis (Vinyl Orphanage), Rufus Hofbagger, Sluggo, The Tryg Identity, Zenguin Productions, and El Zoológico all worked together to make that first compilation, SILLY SONGS.

A community of friends made something new and fun and gave it away to the world. Kazoomzoom was born!