music disk - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

A music disk isn't necessarily anything more than a zipfile (traditionally, up to one floppy diskette's capacity, hence the name) containing computer music in some format or another (traditionally tracker music). They could be gussied up, however, and at their most baroque -- a demoscene speciality -- would include bespoke programs not only playing the songs but conveying messages to the listener at the same time via scrolly bar, while providing responsive visualizations on-screen to entertain the end user.

In the '80s, platforms for music disks included the obvious multimedia powerhouses of the C64 (SID chiptune music), Atari ST and Amiga but any environment which could yield sound output could host them: Apple 2, ZX Spectrum, Atari XL, etc. (And of course plenty for the PC. We released [the 604 Music Disk] in 1996, and two years prior Digitallusions dropped [The Bells of Yule]. Our colleagues in [The Immortal Syndicate] also released a few.) A music disk could be a collection of music intended to be played on video game console hardware (sometimes circulated on ROMs, sometimes on physical cartridges!), and as the century turned over there was really not much of a clear dividing line between music disks dropped by crews and albums of digital music published by netlabels.

I don't know if collections of MIDI music instructions were ever circulated described as music disks, but I don't see why they couldn't be. (Similarly, the celebrated [SMILE] Public Domain ANSI art collection should be counted as one, as it is at its essence a gallery of [ANSI music] circulated digitally with illustrations.)