The practice of Tape traing is an unofficial method of distribution of demo tapes encompassing musical genres such as punk, hardcore, thrash metal and death metal other taped music such as recordings of live shows were also distributed this way, prevalent during the 1980s and 1990's. Tape trading was a postal system reliant, penfriend style nature of an underground network that relied heavily on the cooperation of fans of different musical genres worldwide as well as the acts being promoted this way themselves eschewing any copyright in order to further spread their notoriety. Acts that gained a following through this might land a record deal.