If you came across IramaNusantara.com, there probably would be many classic but few familiar album covers. It'€™s like a jukebox of your parents'€™ playlist that invades the modern digital world.

Old melodies, phrases and hairstyles are presented by Irama Nusantara in a clean website layout. The choices range between music from the 1950s to 1980s, but those who manage the site are still young at heart.

'€œOur parents experienced it before, so it'€™s nostalgic. But we are from the 1990s generation and have a different sensibility about listening to different kinds of music. Yet, we can relate to the music from older generations and it feels like a new discovery every time we hear a song we haven'€™t heard before,'€ said David Tarigan who volunteers as an archivist for the website.

'€œThe first time I listened to The Rollies [a funk band popular in the 60s], I was '€˜electrified'€™. The band was so cool back then. I felt like I was listening to new songs,'€ said Toma Avianda, the web designer and IT volunteer.

Chris Priyonugroho, Alvin Yunata, David Tarigan, Toma Avianda, Dian Wulandari, Mayumi Haryoto and Norman Illyas Rumahorbo launched the website of the Irama Nusantara community on Independence Day, August 17, last year. It is still in beta test mode up until now. They hope to release the full version later in 2014.

The next development will include a social media site similar to Facebook for discussing Indonesian music. Members who register with the account can hold discussions in forums and have their own music library. It will be the Indonesian version of Allmusic.com and Wikipedia.org.

Before Irama Nusantara, there was Indonesia Jumawa back on 1998. It used a similar approach in archiving information with scanned album covers, labels and audio snippets. Unfortunately, it did not last long.

'€œWe'€™re too lazy to maintain it. When we were college students, we had so many ideas. But we were busy studying, we were unable to run it,'€ said Alvin who is responsible for articles on the web.

After graduating from college in Bandung, the reunion occurred in 2008 when they started an online radio station called Kentang (potato) in Jakarta. Their passion for old Indonesian music resulted in a high number of listeners, they said. Their enthusiasm grew they began to search lesser known musicians, like Maulani and Harius.

'€œThere were many musicians and bands that we wanted to find information on, but there was very little access to information. Even older generations know so little,'€ David stated.

Although unknown to most Indonesian, classic Indonesian tunes are well-known abroad. The knowledge transfer came with the help of the Internet through foreign bloggers. The foreign music fans even released the album officially and most of them unofficially.

'€œMost of these albums were never been rereleased. The legacy was not being transferred to younger generations. The problems were that the record companies no longer existed, the master copies were missing and the information was not organized or archived. There were also copyright issues,'€ David discussed his experience in looking through the music archives when he part of a team that was in charge of selecting Rolling Stone Indonesia magazine'€™s 150 Best Indonesian Albums.

'€œArchiving is a form of education. Without archiving, we cannot learn history. The traces of our social dynamics and culture are in there. We can learn history through music,'€ Chris explained.

They have a major focus in digitalizing all the data gathered. They converted them into WAV (uncompressed audio format), recovering them from the noise, and visually displaying the album covers online. All the liner notes, catalog numbers and any information they can get were also put online.

Due to their passion for sharing music, they also wanted the collection to be perfect. So they edited the audio file to be clean it of any scratchy or hissing sounds. Sometimes it took 10 times longer than the song duration itself to create clear audio file. They even utilized digital imaging to restore the image quality of the album covers. They also managed secure various sources to supply them with records, ranging from vintage stores to personal collectors.

With limited funds, Irama Nusantara faced problems along the way. The major headache came from sharing web hosting cost with up to 500 MB memory usage. If there was significant traffic, the website would go down. The server cannot handle the amount of data that they already have. For now, they claimed to upload around hundreds of songs. But actually, they have much more collection than that.

To manage web storage and tackle copyrights issues, they put fair quality files on 56 kbps. For listening only, not to reproduce an album. The audience can create mix tapes, podcast or stream the music online. All songs and covers were protected to disable download.

'€œYou claim to appreciate local creativity yet you want to download for free? What contribution do you give to them, the owner of the songs?'€ Chris stated.

Irama Nusantara contributed its contents for educational and noncommercial use. It has been registered as a not-for-profit foundation. According to Law No. 19/2002 on copyright, it is not considered as a violation if the song materials are used for educational purposes. So if they are sued, they would talk it through and ask for proper copyright permission. If not granted, they are happy to part with the song.

'€œWe don'€™t want any conflicts. We do this for the society, for Indonesia. It is not just for fun,'€ said Chris.

The big dream is to reconstruct Indonesia'€™s music history.

'€œWe can just ask for collaboration. The real deal is with Irama, Remaco and Mutiara [record labels]. It is a pity that the collection is scattered. These are the main missing puzzle pieces we need to discover,'€ Alvin explained.

Irama Nusantara has asked permission from the heirs of Remaco and Irama to complete their released catalogs. Most of the old record labels heirs had given up the business. Remaco heirs still maintain their collections, while Irama gave their blessings to organize its lists.

As a legal entity, Irama Nusantara is armed to search funding for its sustainability. They hope they can gather enough funding for digitalization equipment, serve and incentives for the volunteers. They dream of having a physical library with an auditorium. But first, they need to complete the core of Irama Nusantara in the digital data collection.

'€œWe want to have archive booths with touch screens where people can view the catalog. We will put it in cultural and educational space,'€ David dreamed.