7 ms·

I'd actually say the biggest disaster in history of music is what.cd being shut down. They had the largest collection of hard to find music, meticulously curate

I'd actually say the biggest disaster in history of music is what.cd being shut down. They had the largest collection of hard to find music, meticulously curated and in lossless formats. I doubt there will ever be such a complete collection and it was devastating to see it get killed like that.

jacquesm 7y ago
There were several indie music sites that shut down that had really good stuff on them too. I always wonder what happens to the media that carried the data.
dddddaviddddd 7y ago
Is there anything like it left today?
- Scramblejams 7y ago
  Gotta be an onion site somewhere, right? Wish I knew.
- jumelles 7y ago
  There are indeed trackers trying to fill the void.
pinebox 7y ago
Most of the music on WCD originated from physical media which still exists in the world. I would say mp3.com being wiped was much more significant in terms of truly lost music.
srndsnd 7y ago
There have been some replacement Gazelle trackers that have popped up in its place, but they're definitely fractured bits of the whole that was what. Not only was it an incredible place just to find the music that you were looking for, but it was a community dedicated to the preservation and restoration of music. It taught me loads about audio codecs and compression, and was my introduction to the world of programming and automation. I miss it deeply.
mrbbk 7y ago
I normally don't bother posting replies to comments on here, but I have to point out that this is an unbelievably bizarre and wrongheaded interpretation of the scale and depth of this disaster. Curated collections of lossless streaming music are possible to recreate. Master tapes can NEVER BE RECREATED. Comparing the loss of a collection of reproducible fungible audio files with analog magnetic tape is misinformed at best and disingenuous at worst.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- randomsearch 7y ago
  Steelmanning, if you’re certain you’re correct then you should assume the OP was misinformed, in which case why not kindly explain why without being aggressive? Educate us rather than attack us, please!
  - bogomipz 7y ago
    They did explain and so does the article: From the article: >'2. The Truest Capture It is sonic fidelity, first and foremost, that defines the importance of masters. “A master is the truest capture of a piece of recorded music,” said Adam Block, the former president of Legacy Recordings, Sony Music Entertainment’s catalog arm. “Sonically, masters can be stunning in their capturing of an event in time. Every copy thereafter is a sonic step away.”' There is no recording with fidelity greater than the master tapes. It is the canonical "lossless" audio source. To state that the loss of a retail outlet that sold consumer products is somehow greater than the loss of 175K original audio recording from which all retail products were generated from is truly bizarre. I didn't take the OP's tone aggressive just one of astonishment.
  - Dirlewanger 7y ago
    Remember that what.cd only stored metadata files like .torrents/magnets/.cues/etc. I doubt very few, if any, of the rare releases there were actually lost; they're still out there somewhere in the Internet. What was lost was the platform and the community that allowed said rare music to be easily shared and propagated.
daurnimator 7y ago
IMO the shutdown of Oink's pink palace was much worse than what.cd. What.cd was the bits of OiNK that people had bothered to archive...
- ukyrgf 7y ago
  This was true of Waffles. They were just torrent sites. People used them, musicians approved, leaks happened, and everything else that pirates do went down there. What.CD, however, became a place that was trying to build an archive of every piece of recorded music ever created. If a version of an album wasn't on there, a bounty was created that was often compelling enough that people would spend time and money hunting down a copy of it.
  - gloflo 7y ago
    It was the same at OiNK's, at least for certain genres. Purely from the community itself.
  - macandcheese 7y ago
    They weren't just torrent sites, they housed communities and (eventually on What) music graphs that led to countless new musical discoveries for users. If Oink wasn't shut down, What.cd wouldn't have existed - it was simply the precursor. Waffles was just (IMO) a slightly less popular destination for the diaspora of Oink users.
- lisnake 7y ago
  In the end, what.cd collection was several times bigger than oink
laxentasken 7y ago
You're forgetting oink.
asdff 7y ago
what.cd didn't host anything, so all the shutdown did was scatter the community. Since with p2p everything is on someone's local drive at the end of the day, it didn't destroy any files and didn't stop files from being seeded by peers. Only a matter of time before the community rallies again imo, or someone dumps all the magnet links into a text file and passes that around for all to seed. An unhosted what.cd would be immune to the RIAA and other scum.
antisemiotic 7y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but was what.cd the private tracker with an insane interview process that people have written guides about? If so, then I see parallels - self-appointed gatekeepers of culture create a single point of failure, shit hits the fan one day, countless amount of work is lost.
- samfriedman 7y ago
  That's the one. Although the interview was mostly to make sure you knew the basics of how audio files worked and why people on the site cared about upholding their quality: nothing an hour of studying couldn't prepare you for. The database of various rare releases, artist graphs, user collages, etc. were the biggest loss.
  - antisemiotic 7y ago
    Thanks. I never really had the patience to manage ratios and survive on private trackers, and fishing for invites and passing an interview to get into the secret treehouse was too much for me. Too late for that of course, but couldn't that data have been stored somewhere away from the questionably legal stuff?
- ukyrgf 7y ago
  Although people are always hesitant to say the name, I actually think you're thinking of Redacted. There's a whole website and IRC room prepping for the entrance exam. Unfortunately, the site is just as joyless as the exam process would lead you to suspect. The top discussion in /r/trackers right now is about exactly that.

jacquesm 7y ago

There were several indie music sites that shut down that had really good stuff on them too. I always wonder what happens to the media that carried the data.

dddddaviddddd 7y ago

Is there anything like it left today?

Scramblejams 7y ago
Gotta be an onion site somewhere, right? Wish I knew.
jumelles 7y ago
There are indeed trackers trying to fill the void.

pinebox 7y ago

Most of the music on WCD originated from physical media which still exists in the world. I would say mp3.com being wiped was much more significant in terms of truly lost music.

srndsnd 7y ago

There have been some replacement Gazelle trackers that have popped up in its place, but they're definitely fractured bits of the whole that was what. Not only was it an incredible place just to find the music that you were looking for, but it was a community dedicated to the preservation and restoration of music. It taught me loads about audio codecs and compression, and was my introduction to the world of programming and automation. I miss it deeply.

mrbbk 7y ago

I normally don't bother posting replies to comments on here, but I have to point out that this is an unbelievably bizarre and wrongheaded interpretation of the scale and depth of this disaster. Curated collections of lossless streaming music are possible to recreate. Master tapes can NEVER BE RECREATED. Comparing the loss of a collection of reproducible fungible audio files with analog magnetic tape is misinformed at best and disingenuous at worst.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
randomsearch 7y ago
Steelmanning, if you’re certain you’re correct then you should assume the OP was misinformed, in which case why not kindly explain why without being aggressive? Educate us rather than attack us, please!
- bogomipz 7y ago
  They did explain and so does the article: From the article: >'2. The Truest Capture It is sonic fidelity, first and foremost, that defines the importance of masters. “A master is the truest capture of a piece of recorded music,” said Adam Block, the former president of Legacy Recordings, Sony Music Entertainment’s catalog arm. “Sonically, masters can be stunning in their capturing of an event in time. Every copy thereafter is a sonic step away.”' There is no recording with fidelity greater than the master tapes. It is the canonical "lossless" audio source. To state that the loss of a retail outlet that sold consumer products is somehow greater than the loss of 175K original audio recording from which all retail products were generated from is truly bizarre. I didn't take the OP's tone aggressive just one of astonishment.
- Dirlewanger 7y ago
  Remember that what.cd only stored metadata files like .torrents/magnets/.cues/etc. I doubt very few, if any, of the rare releases there were actually lost; they're still out there somewhere in the Internet. What was lost was the platform and the community that allowed said rare music to be easily shared and propagated.

daurnimator 7y ago

IMO the shutdown of Oink's pink palace was much worse than what.cd. What.cd was the bits of OiNK that people had bothered to archive...

ukyrgf 7y ago
This was true of Waffles. They were just torrent sites. People used them, musicians approved, leaks happened, and everything else that pirates do went down there. What.CD, however, became a place that was trying to build an archive of every piece of recorded music ever created. If a version of an album wasn't on there, a bounty was created that was often compelling enough that people would spend time and money hunting down a copy of it.
- gloflo 7y ago
  It was the same at OiNK's, at least for certain genres. Purely from the community itself.
- macandcheese 7y ago
  They weren't just torrent sites, they housed communities and (eventually on What) music graphs that led to countless new musical discoveries for users. If Oink wasn't shut down, What.cd wouldn't have existed - it was simply the precursor. Waffles was just (IMO) a slightly less popular destination for the diaspora of Oink users.
lisnake 7y ago
In the end, what.cd collection was several times bigger than oink

laxentasken 7y ago

You're forgetting oink.

asdff 7y ago

what.cd didn't host anything, so all the shutdown did was scatter the community. Since with p2p everything is on someone's local drive at the end of the day, it didn't destroy any files and didn't stop files from being seeded by peers. Only a matter of time before the community rallies again imo, or someone dumps all the magnet links into a text file and passes that around for all to seed. An unhosted what.cd would be immune to the RIAA and other scum.

antisemiotic 7y ago

Forgive my ignorance, but was what.cd the private tracker with an insane interview process that people have written guides about? If so, then I see parallels - self-appointed gatekeepers of culture create a single point of failure, shit hits the fan one day, countless amount of work is lost.

samfriedman 7y ago
That's the one. Although the interview was mostly to make sure you knew the basics of how audio files worked and why people on the site cared about upholding their quality: nothing an hour of studying couldn't prepare you for. The database of various rare releases, artist graphs, user collages, etc. were the biggest loss.
- antisemiotic 7y ago
  Thanks. I never really had the patience to manage ratios and survive on private trackers, and fishing for invites and passing an interview to get into the secret treehouse was too much for me. Too late for that of course, but couldn't that data have been stored somewhere away from the questionably legal stuff?
ukyrgf 7y ago
Although people are always hesitant to say the name, I actually think you're thinking of Redacted. There's a whole website and IRC room prepping for the entrance exam. Unfortunately, the site is just as joyless as the exam process would lead you to suspect. The top discussion in /r/trackers right now is about exactly that.