4 ms·

Music piracy is alive and well if you know where to look. Some places has been mentioned in this thread already. Of course there is no replacing the magic of ea

by omgmajk 3mo ago

Music piracy is alive and well if you know where to look. Some places has been mentioned in this thread already. Of course there is no replacing the magic of early 2000-2010's p2p sites like OiNK, What and Waffles - but well curated sites still exist.

muppetman 3mo ago
Indeed. I'm a member of a few music trackers and they have a lot of great stuff, but What's archive was amazing. One of my proudest things I own is a What.cd beer cooler I bought from them.
- omgmajk 3mo ago
  Never bought any merch from what, but I do own a ScT t-shirt :)
- whatcd 3mo ago
  i only have what.cd stickers. i wish i wouldve bought more! i wish i had a legit music torrent site nowadays too
- marysol5 3mo ago
  Here's the other side of the issue for these platforms, they're profiteering from the criminality of the users
  - illliillll 3mo ago
    In a legal sense? Absolutely. In a real sense? What.CD and it’s likes didn’t even come close to being a profitable use of their operators time.
ValdikSS 3mo ago
Public p2p sharing is pretty much dead in the West. Only Russian Rutracker is still going strong, but everything other is either stagnating or defunct. I have a p2p sharing websites bookmarks which I collected about 5 years ago, 60% of them are dead now. Private (invite-only) West sharing websites are still alive though, but are supported mostly by beefy enthusiasts who seed everything via a seedbox elsewhere, not in their home country on their residential connection. Rutracker went the other way: they organized donation collection to buy the HDDs to the 'saviours' group, a one-time investment compared to the datacenter server cost. In RU/UA, people usually seed from home.
- omgmajk 3mo ago
  I haven't used a public site since Suprnova so I don't know about the health of public p2p sites at all. The private side is absolutely not stagnant, new sites pop up all the time and you can still find all the niche stuff you want to find by just nudging the enthusiasts with requests. A lot of them seed from home, with humongous servers, and there are preservation programs going on in various places.
  - ValdikSS 3mo ago
    Yes, that's true, but the core reason there are private p2p sites is because you're most likely to get a DMCA violation letter from the watchdog company via your ISP or to you directly in the West. Even if it may be not a punishable offense, that still freaks out people, and they choose not to seed from home or use public websites which are scraped by DMCA watchdogs. I don't see much point in contributing to closed silos (even if I'm present on the majority of invite-only music trackers and occasionally contribute there) because I have ThePirateBay and RuTracker account: it's the same, but it's open for everyone and google-able. Some private trackers disallow accessing them via VPN, which I find super strange. They want to access the website with your residential connection, but they allow seeding via VPN (which many do, because see above). Other private tracker which I used to be on had a timeout on account life time. If you don't log in once in a while (6 months AFAIR), your account will be suspended, even if you're seeding all the content in the torrent client all this time.
    - ryandrake 3mo ago
      I think for normal people, private trackers seem inaccessible and might as well not exist. When I was a kid, I had gobs of free time and spent most of it dialing into BBS systems, learning who to contact, and navigating the scene's trust network, just to get invites to warez sites. Now that I'm an adult, I'm a lame Casual, too busy living my life to have time to sit there figuring out the secret handshake needed to get an invite to Private Tracker X.
      - bugufu8f83 3mo ago
anal_reactor 3mo ago
I really struggle to find new music. I feel like I've already listened way too many times to everything I have on my SD card, but I really don't know what to look for. When I was a kid I was very much into rock and everything adjacent so I do have albums of most iconic rock bands. Nowadays I'm more into electronic music. I love a good techno track and I have a folder with 2000-2010 greatest pop-techno bangers. God damn Basshunter gave me more happiness than my entire career combined. At home I often listen to more ambient music, mostly from SomaFM. There's an artist/band called Hello Meteor and the worst album is still 9/10. On the opposite side of the spectrum there's this guy Darren Tate - most of his music is literal trash, but there are a few golden nuggets with how he operates with dynamic range. Like, Prayer For God is absolutely amazing, it's so energetic. But it's really difficult for me to find electronic music that doesn't suck, most DJs make one good track by pure luck while mass-producing slop.
- omgmajk 3mo ago
  Go check out ektoplazm.com, electronic music with permissable licenses. Good for the culture of this website. Most things can be downloaded in flac. Then when you have found a style, soundcloud is likely your home to find stuff and then when you have found it you can either rip it or buy it.
- ValdikSS 3mo ago
  - https://dieordiy2.blogspot.com/ - https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/ - Last.FM Recommendations based on your bands - Mixtapes and radio mixes, there are countless
- acomjean 3mo ago
  I find college radio to be a good curator of music. MIT radio is a mix of students and long time music lovers who DJ. They archive shows for a couple weeks (though it’s automatic so the shown typically starts a couple minutes in). Some shows actually list the songs they play at trackblaster. Radio Ninja I like for electronic music. They put shows up on mixcloud as well. https://www.wmbr.org/cgi-bin/show?id=6883 https://www.wmbr.org/cgi-bin/show?id=6883
- Multicomp 3mo ago
ThatMedicIsASpy 3mo ago
It is also simple to download from the streaming services so to me things got as simple as pasting a link in the terminal to rip to no internet places like a car
soco 3mo ago
Oh but also the good old IRC channels on Undernet or whatever? Not quite warez to get you banned, just gray area with no official support but allowed to stay. Community chat, music recommendations, admin bots and random trivia - #mp3_...
- marysol5 3mo ago
  Still lots of XDCC around, of course vast majority of it is stored on hacked servers....

by omgmajk 3mo ago

muppetman 3mo ago

Indeed. I'm a member of a few music trackers and they have a lot of great stuff, but What's archive was amazing. One of my proudest things I own is a What.cd beer cooler I bought from them.

omgmajk 3mo ago
Never bought any merch from what, but I do own a ScT t-shirt :)
whatcd 3mo ago
i only have what.cd stickers. i wish i wouldve bought more! i wish i had a legit music torrent site nowadays too
marysol5 3mo ago
Here's the other side of the issue for these platforms, they're profiteering from the criminality of the users
- illliillll 3mo ago
  In a legal sense? Absolutely. In a real sense? What.CD and it’s likes didn’t even come close to being a profitable use of their operators time.

ValdikSS 3mo ago

Public p2p sharing is pretty much dead in the West. Only Russian Rutracker is still going strong, but everything other is either stagnating or defunct. I have a p2p sharing websites bookmarks which I collected about 5 years ago, 60% of them are dead now. Private (invite-only) West sharing websites are still alive though, but are supported mostly by beefy enthusiasts who seed everything via a seedbox elsewhere, not in their home country on their residential connection. Rutracker went the other way: they organized donation collection to buy the HDDs to the 'saviours' group, a one-time investment compared to the datacenter server cost. In RU/UA, people usually seed from home.

omgmajk 3mo ago
I haven't used a public site since Suprnova so I don't know about the health of public p2p sites at all. The private side is absolutely not stagnant, new sites pop up all the time and you can still find all the niche stuff you want to find by just nudging the enthusiasts with requests. A lot of them seed from home, with humongous servers, and there are preservation programs going on in various places.
- ValdikSS 3mo ago
  Yes, that's true, but the core reason there are private p2p sites is because you're most likely to get a DMCA violation letter from the watchdog company via your ISP or to you directly in the West. Even if it may be not a punishable offense, that still freaks out people, and they choose not to seed from home or use public websites which are scraped by DMCA watchdogs. I don't see much point in contributing to closed silos (even if I'm present on the majority of invite-only music trackers and occasionally contribute there) because I have ThePirateBay and RuTracker account: it's the same, but it's open for everyone and google-able. Some private trackers disallow accessing them via VPN, which I find super strange. They want to access the website with your residential connection, but they allow seeding via VPN (which many do, because see above). Other private tracker which I used to be on had a timeout on account life time. If you don't log in once in a while (6 months AFAIR), your account will be suspended, even if you're seeding all the content in the torrent client all this time.
  - ryandrake 3mo ago
    I think for normal people, private trackers seem inaccessible and might as well not exist. When I was a kid, I had gobs of free time and spent most of it dialing into BBS systems, learning who to contact, and navigating the scene's trust network, just to get invites to warez sites. Now that I'm an adult, I'm a lame Casual, too busy living my life to have time to sit there figuring out the secret handshake needed to get an invite to Private Tracker X.
    - bugufu8f83 3mo ago

anal_reactor 3mo ago

I really struggle to find new music. I feel like I've already listened way too many times to everything I have on my SD card, but I really don't know what to look for. When I was a kid I was very much into rock and everything adjacent so I do have albums of most iconic rock bands. Nowadays I'm more into electronic music. I love a good techno track and I have a folder with 2000-2010 greatest pop-techno bangers. God damn Basshunter gave me more happiness than my entire career combined. At home I often listen to more ambient music, mostly from SomaFM. There's an artist/band called Hello Meteor and the worst album is still 9/10. On the opposite side of the spectrum there's this guy Darren Tate - most of his music is literal trash, but there are a few golden nuggets with how he operates with dynamic range. Like, Prayer For God is absolutely amazing, it's so energetic. But it's really difficult for me to find electronic music that doesn't suck, most DJs make one good track by pure luck while mass-producing slop.

omgmajk 3mo ago
Go check out ektoplazm.com, electronic music with permissable licenses. Good for the culture of this website. Most things can be downloaded in flac. Then when you have found a style, soundcloud is likely your home to find stuff and then when you have found it you can either rip it or buy it.
ValdikSS 3mo ago
- https://dieordiy2.blogspot.com/ - https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/ - Last.FM Recommendations based on your bands - Mixtapes and radio mixes, there are countless
acomjean 3mo ago
I find college radio to be a good curator of music. MIT radio is a mix of students and long time music lovers who DJ. They archive shows for a couple weeks (though it’s automatic so the shown typically starts a couple minutes in). Some shows actually list the songs they play at trackblaster. Radio Ninja I like for electronic music. They put shows up on mixcloud as well. https://www.wmbr.org/cgi-bin/show?id=6883 https://www.wmbr.org/cgi-bin/show?id=6883
Multicomp 3mo ago

ThatMedicIsASpy 3mo ago

It is also simple to download from the streaming services so to me things got as simple as pasting a link in the terminal to rip to no internet places like a car

soco 3mo ago

Oh but also the good old IRC channels on Undernet or whatever? Not quite warez to get you banned, just gray area with no official support but allowed to stay. Community chat, music recommendations, admin bots and random trivia - #mp3_...

marysol5 3mo ago
Still lots of XDCC around, of course vast majority of it is stored on hacked servers....