Those who produce these files (using the software called music trackers) and listen to them form the worldwide MOD scene,[1] a part of the demoscene subculture.
Nowadays, most module files, including ones in compressed form, are supported by most popular media players such as VLC, Foobar2000, Exaile and many others (mainly due to inclusion of common playback libraries such as libmodplug for gstreamer).
The process of composing module files, known as tracking, is a skillful activity that involves a much closer contact with musical sound than conventional composition, as every aspect of each sonic event is coded, from pitch and duration to exact volume, panning, and laying in numerous effects such as echo, tremolo and fades.
[12] Many tracker musicians gained international prominence within MOD software users and some of them went on to work for high-profile video game studios, or began to appear on large record labels.
[8][13] Notable artists include Andrew Sega, Purple Motion, Darude, Alexander Brandon, Peter Hajba, Axwell, Venetian Snares, Jesper Kyd, TDK, Thomas J. Bergersen, Markus Kaarlonen, Michiel van den Bos and Dan Gardopée.
A music disk is typically packaged in the form of a program with a custom user interface, so the listener does not need other software to play the songs.