Sapphirecut

Sapphirecut doubles as the alias of Philadelphia physician turned vocalist/composer Megan Taylor and the name for the progressive trance group she formed with keyboardists Dave Shaffer and Jake Knights. In December of 2001, Taylor brought dubplates of the group's track "Free Your Mind" to the Winter Music Conference in Miami and handed them out to all of the DJs she admired. She picked up the phone months later, and it was superstar DJ Danny Tenaglia looking to license the track for his Back to Basics collection. The group didn't have a label so Tenaglia introduced them to Rob Di Stefano, owner of the dance label Twisted. Twisted issued the "Free Your Mind" single in 2003 and it quickly climbed the dance charts. Sapphirecut made big news when Taylor contacted the popular and electronica oriented file-sharing network, Soulseek, in an effort to stop the group's music from being shared amongst users. When Soulseek's server host Verio became aware of the situation they dropped the network and it was unavailable for weeks. Sapphirecut's actions soon became a hot topic on forums across the Internet.