Module files (MOD music, tracker music) are a family of music file formats originating from the MOD file format on Amiga systems used in late 1980s. Those who produce these files (using the software called trackers) and listen to them, form the worldwide MOD scene, a part of the Demoscene subculture, which involves large number of people in many countries of the world which is hard to count due to underground nature of this scene. The mass interchange of "MOD music" or "tracker music" (music stored in module files created with trackers) evolves from early FIDO networks. Nowadays most module files, including ones in zipped form, are supported by most popular media players such as Winamp, VLC, Amarok, Exaile and many others. Many websites host large amounts of these files, the most comprehensive of them being the Mod Archive.Module files store several patterns or pages of music data in a form similar to that of a spreadsheet. These patterns contain note numbers, instrument numbers, and controller messages. The number of notes that can be played simultaneously depends on how many tracks there are per pattern.Module files also give a list of the order in which to play the patterns. However, the biggest advantage of MOD family over standard MIDI files is that MODs include their own audio samples and should sound exactly the same from one player to another (barring interpolation methods and any errors in players).Module files are often referred to as tracker modules, and composing modules is known as tracking, simply because the first ever module creating program was Ultimate Soundtracker, created by Karsten Obarski in 1987. Soundtracker was cloned many times, with programs such as NoiseTracker and ProTracker being direct descendants from the original Soundtracker code, and others such as MED/OctaMED and Oktalyzer being written from scratch. Such programs are called trackers in general.A disadvantage of module files is that there is no real standard specification in how the modules should be played back properly, which may result in modules sounding slightly different in different players. This is mostly due to effects that can be applied to the samples in the module file and how the authors of different players choose to implement them.
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