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Am i the only one who has no clue what a "Tracker Song" is? The article barely touches on this, saying vaguely "The songs that were stolen were often used in k

by petee 7y ago

Am i the only one who has no clue what a "Tracker Song" is? The article barely touches on this, saying vaguely "The songs that were stolen were often used in keygen cracking software that was popular in the 2000s to pirate software" -- so the music was used as a key for the keygen? Or was it just included for giggles? Or is it a fingerprint intended for actual tracking? edit: thanks for all the replies, some really great info below!

indigochill 7y ago
Keygen cracking software would sometimes play music while the software was open. It was just for giggles AFAIK.
- Can_Not 7y ago
  Great for waking up your parents, too!
yipbub 7y ago
I think they were just artistic flourishes added by the tracker groups, crackers, etc. I think "Tracker" is the name for a service that keeps track of p2p links. Some trackers are/were extremely exclusive and tight-knit with interviews and quizes to get in. You also had to work hard to maintain an upload/download ratio. Some, like thepiratebay are open and simply highlight quality downloads. What.CD was a legendary private tracker if you want to look further into it.
- brtkdotse 7y ago
  Nope, it’s about a type of music software rooted in the demo scene, with overlaps with the cracking scene: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker
  - kortex 7y ago
    I think you and I posted this within seconds of each other :p
  - yipbub 7y ago
    Wow, that's the first result on google. I've been noticing a trend of mental laziness in myself in the past few months. Time to do something about it.
- kortex 7y ago
  Actually it's a type of sequencer used to make music for sound chips. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker
myself248 7y ago
A "tracker" is a piece of music composition software, sort of a glorified spreadsheet. Imagine a virtual piano roll, with note and instrument data laid out over time. The vast majority of tracker music was initially in a format called MOD, since it originated the format. MOD's specification was matched to the capabilities of the Amiga sound chip, which proved limiting as time went on, so other formats emerged. Formats and file extensions now include STM, S3M, XM, and countless more. The collective term "tracker music" is easier than trying to enumerate them all. Trackers are differentiated from note-data formats like MIDI in that a tracker song includes the samples themselves, little snippets of WAV-like data which are played at sped-up or slowed-down sample rates according to the note data. Whereas a MIDI file only includes the notes and timing information, which gets sent to "instruments", which are responsible for translating those commands into sound. Different instruments may do it differently, so a MIDI can sound vastly different depending on what player you're using. A tracker song will sound roughly the same everywhere, barring bugs, with the only difference being that certain player software may have higher-quality math (higher CPU usage) for the sample-rate adjustment and mixing. Because of their self-contained nature, containing only the sound samples actually used in a given song, tracked music was popular in video games and in the game cracking scene alike. (All the music in Star Control 2 is embedded MOD files, for instance.) And like anything else in what became the demo-scene, the mantra of doing more with less, making enjoyable music in just a few K of note data and samples combined, became its own factor to compete on. Modarchive.org is the place to go to experience tracker music now; there are players that run in your browser. Click through the top couple songs and you'll get a feel for not just the format but also the era, since the heyday of MOD was the early 90s, much of it fits right into what we now nostalgically think of as 90s electronica.
- SyneRyder 7y ago
  Just to add that while most tracked music in the 90s was electronica, there were others who tried different genres. My favorite example is Leviathan's "Dust To Dust", a Scream Tracker 3 composition that tended towards jazz / soft rock with something like a saxophone sound for the lead - once it gets going about a minute in. You can even see briefly in the song notes at the start, Leviathan says "I hopefully will never be forced to return to the typical demomusic genre": https://youtu.be/gFWrHFQdb7E https://youtu.be/gFWrHFQdb7E But even with the original MOD format, Bjorn Lynne / Dr Awesome wrote a lot of Prog Rock MODs inspired by Genesis and other bands.
IndrekR 7y ago
It is something that was popular in 90's. XM and MOD formats were common in this neck of the woods at least (Estonia). That was before MP3 was a thing. Kind of like MIDI, but sample audio was also embedded in the file. Named after FastTracker 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTracker_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTracker_2
- IndrekR 7y ago
  Correction. Not named after FastTracker 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker
uk_programmer 7y ago
There is a great video on youtube that explains how it all works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs He gets into the explanation of how the tracker software works about 8min 30seconds in. Typically though if you got a cracked game at that time it would have the crackers group name and there would be a little graphical demo and some tracker music.

by petee 7y ago

indigochill 7y ago

Keygen cracking software would sometimes play music while the software was open. It was just for giggles AFAIK.

Can_Not 7y ago
Great for waking up your parents, too!

yipbub 7y ago

I think they were just artistic flourishes added by the tracker groups, crackers, etc. I think "Tracker" is the name for a service that keeps track of p2p links. Some trackers are/were extremely exclusive and tight-knit with interviews and quizes to get in. You also had to work hard to maintain an upload/download ratio. Some, like thepiratebay are open and simply highlight quality downloads. What.CD was a legendary private tracker if you want to look further into it.

brtkdotse 7y ago
Nope, it’s about a type of music software rooted in the demo scene, with overlaps with the cracking scene: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker
- kortex 7y ago
  I think you and I posted this within seconds of each other :p
- yipbub 7y ago
  Wow, that's the first result on google. I've been noticing a trend of mental laziness in myself in the past few months. Time to do something about it.
kortex 7y ago
Actually it's a type of sequencer used to make music for sound chips. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker

myself248 7y ago

A "tracker" is a piece of music composition software, sort of a glorified spreadsheet. Imagine a virtual piano roll, with note and instrument data laid out over time. The vast majority of tracker music was initially in a format called MOD, since it originated the format. MOD's specification was matched to the capabilities of the Amiga sound chip, which proved limiting as time went on, so other formats emerged. Formats and file extensions now include STM, S3M, XM, and countless more. The collective term "tracker music" is easier than trying to enumerate them all. Trackers are differentiated from note-data formats like MIDI in that a tracker song includes the samples themselves, little snippets of WAV-like data which are played at sped-up or slowed-down sample rates according to the note data. Whereas a MIDI file only includes the notes and timing information, which gets sent to "instruments", which are responsible for translating those commands into sound. Different instruments may do it differently, so a MIDI can sound vastly different depending on what player you're using. A tracker song will sound roughly the same everywhere, barring bugs, with the only difference being that certain player software may have higher-quality math (higher CPU usage) for the sample-rate adjustment and mixing. Because of their self-contained nature, containing only the sound samples actually used in a given song, tracked music was popular in video games and in the game cracking scene alike. (All the music in Star Control 2 is embedded MOD files, for instance.) And like anything else in what became the demo-scene, the mantra of doing more with less, making enjoyable music in just a few K of note data and samples combined, became its own factor to compete on. Modarchive.org is the place to go to experience tracker music now; there are players that run in your browser. Click through the top couple songs and you'll get a feel for not just the format but also the era, since the heyday of MOD was the early 90s, much of it fits right into what we now nostalgically think of as 90s electronica.

SyneRyder 7y ago
Just to add that while most tracked music in the 90s was electronica, there were others who tried different genres. My favorite example is Leviathan's "Dust To Dust", a Scream Tracker 3 composition that tended towards jazz / soft rock with something like a saxophone sound for the lead - once it gets going about a minute in. You can even see briefly in the song notes at the start, Leviathan says "I hopefully will never be forced to return to the typical demomusic genre": https://youtu.be/gFWrHFQdb7E https://youtu.be/gFWrHFQdb7E But even with the original MOD format, Bjorn Lynne / Dr Awesome wrote a lot of Prog Rock MODs inspired by Genesis and other bands.

IndrekR 7y ago

It is something that was popular in 90's. XM and MOD formats were common in this neck of the woods at least (Estonia). That was before MP3 was a thing. Kind of like MIDI, but sample audio was also embedded in the file. Named after FastTracker 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTracker_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FastTracker_2

IndrekR 7y ago
Correction. Not named after FastTracker 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_tracker

uk_programmer 7y ago

There is a great video on youtube that explains how it all works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs He gets into the explanation of how the tracker software works about 8min 30seconds in. Typically though if you got a cracked game at that time it would have the crackers group name and there would be a little graphical demo and some tracker music.