8 ms·

A real tragedy. More than a torrent tracker, What.cd was a beautiful, vibrant, and positive community. Knowing someone in real-life who was a fellow What.cd'er

A real tragedy. More than a torrent tracker, What.cd was a beautiful, vibrant, and positive community. Knowing someone in real-life who was a fellow What.cd'er was enough to form an immediate friendship. (Knowing someone who'd give you an invite was another way ;) I found high-fidelity versions of albums, singles and EPs I couldn't find anywhere else on What.cd. It was faster, more thorough, and cleaner than every other music resource (let alone torrent tracker) around. When I was young and broke, it was my primary way of engaging with music, discovering bands that I'd never heard of, and to this very day remained a crucial part of my music discovery "stack". With that said, What.cd had been dying a slow death for a while now. With the rise of Spotify et al., the need for a private torrent tracker and the requisite accessories (seedboxes, external HDs) has been dimming. What.cd used to be far-and-away my #1 music resource; today it was probably the 3rd or 4th, suitable for finding obscure releases or ones unavailable on streaming sites because of byzantine licensing deals. Back in the day though, What.cd was THE SPOT for hearing popular releases before anyone else. Today, leaks are less prominent, as labels have gotten tighter about protecting their music, and musicians have gotten savvier and prefer to "leak stuff" themselves. For that reason, total download numbers on What.cd have been in decline for years, the community has gotten a bit quieter, although it's still been an extremely valuable resource to fill in the gaps between all the big music streamers. A truly sad day. RIP What.cd. You will be missed.

duaneb 10y ago
I'm very worried about the content. So many recordings in my library are sourced there; many aren't available anywhere else, not on the internet or in stores. A sad day indeed.
- rfrank 10y ago
  Soulseek is alive still somehow, and has a solid selection of rarities.
  - inostia 10y ago
    I just commented this below. Soulseek is amazing! Returned to it after years recently - I remembered the Mac version sucked. Now it's great. Haven't been let down yet and I listen to a lot of rare experimental stuff.
    - rfrank 10y ago
      It's good to hear it's gotten better. I haven't actually used Soulseek in years, but there's a few things in my library I haven't seen anywhere else. I have mp3s from Soulseek that are as old as middle school kids, that's a weird thought.
  - Cerium 10y ago
    Really? I forgot all about it. Thanks!
    - rfrank 10y ago
      I had roughly the same reaction when I saw it was still up fairly recently haha. Waffles' problems had me thinking about the evolution of p2p over the years (downloading LimeWire Pro with LimeWire was my favorite), and I was pleasantly surprised to see them still chugging along.
  - unicornporn 10y ago
    I guess, back to shitty MP3 rips again :-(
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
brokenmachine 10y ago
What are your #1, 2 and 3 music resources now?
- anguswithgusto 10y ago
  Spotify (by a large margin), then YouTube (for discovery) and /mu/ (for community). I still used What.cd for music I wanted offline access to (for running, flights, etc.) as well as the occasional leak or obscurity. But before I got Spotify I was downloading multiple albums a day.
  - MrBra 10y ago
    Spotify really sucks for discovery! After 4 songs you will be listening to vague (not tailored) musical hits that seems to be recommended by someone discovering music for the first time. Pathetic!
    - tomdell 10y ago
      Is that you, Donald Trump?
      - MrBra 10y ago
        Nah, I just like good music. If you don't, you can't understand this.
        tomdell 10y ago
        You really ought to give Spotify Discover a chance - my Discover tab is amazing - it feeds me a constant stream of new wave, dream pop, outsider music, early electronic music, ambient, underground rap - stuff that I like, but haven't heard. The more you use Spotify, the better Discover gets. Don't write it off before giving it enough data to help you.
    - Sharparam 10y ago
      The radios I find to be pretty shit for me (I read somewhere that Google Play Music has a better version of that). However the "Discover Weekly" feature on Spotify I've been very happy with and every week I have new music to listen to and it's mostly things I like. Maybe it's worse for recommending certain genres? I know my friend complains about its hardstyle recommendations.
throwaway2048 10y ago
id say the primary reason for the decline of what.cd downloads was their draconian ratio restrictions, meaning that as a new account (or even old, if you weren't able to take advantage of free leech from times past, which quickly dried up into "neutral leech" without granting ratio) it was almost impossible to actually use the site. What.cd's ratio model was zero sum, so in order for you to get ratio, somebody else has to lose it. In Economic terms that means the entire "ratio economy" freezes up and its very hard to do much of anything. It was a continual, deep flaw with the site that admins refused to acknowledge, i hope any successors keep it in mind. Getting punished for actually using the site and seeding makes no sense whatsoever.
- indiv0 10y ago
  This restriction hindered my usage of the site for a long time, and I ended up "getting around it" by actively waiting for freeleech events and grabbing as much as I possibly could during that time. With everyone else downloading as well, it was entirely possible to build up significant upload credit.
  - smyltnes 10y ago
    One way to get upload credit was to get the users who exploited the ambient genre by automatically downloading every ambient album to download fabricated paulstretch albums.
- plussed_reader 10y ago
  How hard is it to find a couple of popular items and host those for a bit/few days? Easy way to build ratio karma.
  - fudged71 10y ago
    I was a What.cd member years ago (early college) and had two issues: 1) disk space, 2) connectivity/laptop It was hard to maintain content long enough to seed if you want to consume content but don't have much disk space. And with just a laptop it can be hard to keep an internet connection to seed. Eventually it became more effort than it was worth and I just used the top charts to find the music elsewhere. tbh I haven't since found a better source for high quality music recommendations.
fluxic 10y ago
Do you think Spotify played a role in supporting the French police? What.cd was an incredibly potent force for disseminating leaks. One can reasonably suspect that the closure of What.cd will slow the velocity of music piracy, and give more power to streamers/labels when it comes to marketing a new release.
franzen 10y ago
Anybody looking to know more about the origins/organization behind What.cd would do well to check out Stephen Witt's monumental book on the subject: How Music Got Free (https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-Obsession/dp/0143109340 https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-Obsession/dp/01431...)
- 1337biz 10y ago
  Wasn't Oink before What? I still have an oink hoodie...
  - bpp 10y ago
    I remember the day Oink went down. Sad, but What.cd grew out of it.
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 10y ago
      I think this is a good opportunity and time for the rebuild - WCD's front-end infrastructure and database was a spaghetti of PHP and hastily constructed database architecture and the API's left a bit to be desired - though the underlying C++ driving the tracker is probably still pretty solid.
- MrDap 10y ago
  Thank you for this. I've been a WCD member since 2010. It was my first private tracker. I enjoyed the flavor of the WCD atmosphere, could taste the quality of volume after volume of the essential, goofy, ridiculous and down right trash this amazing site had to offer. What's the old saying? "One man's trash is another man's treasure". From sublime to sensuous; from ordinary to extraordinary; from books to manuscripts, with a keen eye and a sense of self worth, the world was at your fingertips. What.CD was more than just a music site on a private tracker. It was a community...a family! There were people who had resources of commonality and rarity that if you knew how to connect, maaan you had the world on a string. I refuse to believe such riches are lost forever. WCD will be back in one form or another, and when it returns I hope to be there to greet the new with an open heart and open arms!

duaneb 10y ago

I'm very worried about the content. So many recordings in my library are sourced there; many aren't available anywhere else, not on the internet or in stores. A sad day indeed.

rfrank 10y ago
Soulseek is alive still somehow, and has a solid selection of rarities.
- inostia 10y ago
  I just commented this below. Soulseek is amazing! Returned to it after years recently - I remembered the Mac version sucked. Now it's great. Haven't been let down yet and I listen to a lot of rare experimental stuff.
  - rfrank 10y ago
    It's good to hear it's gotten better. I haven't actually used Soulseek in years, but there's a few things in my library I haven't seen anywhere else. I have mp3s from Soulseek that are as old as middle school kids, that's a weird thought.
- Cerium 10y ago
  Really? I forgot all about it. Thanks!
  - rfrank 10y ago
    I had roughly the same reaction when I saw it was still up fairly recently haha. Waffles' problems had me thinking about the evolution of p2p over the years (downloading LimeWire Pro with LimeWire was my favorite), and I was pleasantly surprised to see them still chugging along.
- unicornporn 10y ago
  I guess, back to shitty MP3 rips again :-(

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

brokenmachine 10y ago

What are your #1, 2 and 3 music resources now?

anguswithgusto 10y ago
Spotify (by a large margin), then YouTube (for discovery) and /mu/ (for community). I still used What.cd for music I wanted offline access to (for running, flights, etc.) as well as the occasional leak or obscurity. But before I got Spotify I was downloading multiple albums a day.
- MrBra 10y ago
  Spotify really sucks for discovery! After 4 songs you will be listening to vague (not tailored) musical hits that seems to be recommended by someone discovering music for the first time. Pathetic!
  - tomdell 10y ago
    Is that you, Donald Trump?
    - MrBra 10y ago
      Nah, I just like good music. If you don't, you can't understand this.
      - tomdell 10y ago
        You really ought to give Spotify Discover a chance - my Discover tab is amazing - it feeds me a constant stream of new wave, dream pop, outsider music, early electronic music, ambient, underground rap - stuff that I like, but haven't heard. The more you use Spotify, the better Discover gets. Don't write it off before giving it enough data to help you.
  - Sharparam 10y ago
    The radios I find to be pretty shit for me (I read somewhere that Google Play Music has a better version of that). However the "Discover Weekly" feature on Spotify I've been very happy with and every week I have new music to listen to and it's mostly things I like. Maybe it's worse for recommending certain genres? I know my friend complains about its hardstyle recommendations.

throwaway2048 10y ago

id say the primary reason for the decline of what.cd downloads was their draconian ratio restrictions, meaning that as a new account (or even old, if you weren't able to take advantage of free leech from times past, which quickly dried up into "neutral leech" without granting ratio) it was almost impossible to actually use the site. What.cd's ratio model was zero sum, so in order for you to get ratio, somebody else has to lose it. In Economic terms that means the entire "ratio economy" freezes up and its very hard to do much of anything. It was a continual, deep flaw with the site that admins refused to acknowledge, i hope any successors keep it in mind. Getting punished for actually using the site and seeding makes no sense whatsoever.

indiv0 10y ago
This restriction hindered my usage of the site for a long time, and I ended up "getting around it" by actively waiting for freeleech events and grabbing as much as I possibly could during that time. With everyone else downloading as well, it was entirely possible to build up significant upload credit.
- smyltnes 10y ago
  One way to get upload credit was to get the users who exploited the ambient genre by automatically downloading every ambient album to download fabricated paulstretch albums.
plussed_reader 10y ago
How hard is it to find a couple of popular items and host those for a bit/few days? Easy way to build ratio karma.
- fudged71 10y ago
  I was a What.cd member years ago (early college) and had two issues: 1) disk space, 2) connectivity/laptop It was hard to maintain content long enough to seed if you want to consume content but don't have much disk space. And with just a laptop it can be hard to keep an internet connection to seed. Eventually it became more effort than it was worth and I just used the top charts to find the music elsewhere. tbh I haven't since found a better source for high quality music recommendations.

fluxic 10y ago

Do you think Spotify played a role in supporting the French police? What.cd was an incredibly potent force for disseminating leaks. One can reasonably suspect that the closure of What.cd will slow the velocity of music piracy, and give more power to streamers/labels when it comes to marketing a new release.

franzen 10y ago

Anybody looking to know more about the origins/organization behind What.cd would do well to check out Stephen Witt's monumental book on the subject: How Music Got Free (https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-Obsession/dp/0143109340 https://www.amazon.com/How-Music-Got-Free-Obsession/dp/01431...)

1337biz 10y ago
Wasn't Oink before What? I still have an oink hoodie...
- bpp 10y ago
  I remember the day Oink went down. Sad, but What.cd grew out of it.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 10y ago
    I think this is a good opportunity and time for the rebuild - WCD's front-end infrastructure and database was a spaghetti of PHP and hastily constructed database architecture and the API's left a bit to be desired - though the underlying C++ driving the tracker is probably still pretty solid.
MrDap 10y ago
Thank you for this. I've been a WCD member since 2010. It was my first private tracker. I enjoyed the flavor of the WCD atmosphere, could taste the quality of volume after volume of the essential, goofy, ridiculous and down right trash this amazing site had to offer. What's the old saying? "One man's trash is another man's treasure". From sublime to sensuous; from ordinary to extraordinary; from books to manuscripts, with a keen eye and a sense of self worth, the world was at your fingertips. What.CD was more than just a music site on a private tracker. It was a community...a family! There were people who had resources of commonality and rarity that if you knew how to connect, maaan you had the world on a string. I refuse to believe such riches are lost forever. WCD will be back in one form or another, and when it returns I hope to be there to greet the new with an open heart and open arms!