lostsupper
Banned
Fuck 2016.
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What.CD. The biggest/best private music torrent site has been seized.
- Thread starter The Interrobanger
- Start date
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This sucks. People reccommending streaming services have no clue of the kind of community that What fostered. For example, look at how many different versions of S.F. Sorrow there have been, how most of them sound radically different from one another due to the budget constraints in the recording process, and how most of them are long out of print. It's historically significant as it's considered to be one of the first concept albums. What users catalogued these many variations and made them readily available to be appreciated. They're now possibly lost forever leaving a pricey purchase from a collector the only way to experience a rare pressing.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
Still here
I don't understand why people can't both acknowledge the fact that it was among the best sites on the internet to discover and download music while accepting the fact that it is theft. It's okay to admit that piracy has become normalized among a large portion of the most diehard music loving demographic just don't get all holy than thou about it.
Looks at Metallica's new album coming out today. *shifty eyes*
Damn. There was stuff on there that's basically impossible to get anywhere else (legal or otherwise) without years searching, a time machine, and a planet spanning teleporter, along with selling some body parts to cover the price some releases come at. Plus the music discovery, community (pretentious gits as they could be), and layout beat any of the legal alternatives. They're a joke to what what.cd provided.
Considering the insane ratios on there though, it is feasible to bring a lot of it back even if the original site is dead.
Damn. There was stuff on there that's basically impossible to get anywhere else (legal or otherwise) without years searching, a time machine, and a planet spanning teleporter, along with selling some body parts to cover the price some releases come at. Plus the music discovery, community (pretentious gits as they could be), and layout beat any of the legal alternatives. They're a joke to what what.cd provided.
Considering the insane ratios on there though, it is feasible to bring a lot of it back even if the original site is dead.
To think of it in gaming terms, imagine if the best source of NES Roms was shut down.
1. While there are sources for digital NES game distribution, some games just never made it to the digital era.
2. LicensIng rights change frequently. Some NES games are removed from digital distribution.
3. Obscure games never had a legal means to purchase in your country.
4. NES Game reviews and recommendations and an overall gaming enthusiast community.
5. Unfinished or incomplete NES games.
This would be a sad Day for gaming.
Not everyone has constant internet access for streaming. Plus, data caps.
Also, a lot of streaming services are hardly all-encompassing. Spotify doesn't have Radiohead's In Rainbows, for example.
Not advocating piracy, just saying.
I will also say that a lot of illegal digital music has never been officially released for purchase or streaming. There are long out-of-print, obscure records that people have spent hundreds of hours ripping and uploading for other people to discover. Shit that nobody would find otherwise.
Like it or not, pirates are the ones with the highest quality, most comprehensive, and greatest collections in pretty much every form of popular media.
In videogames, pirates have been the only ones to preserve certain games that would have otherwise been left to the wayside, for example.
It's almost like, despite the years of posts and whining about how it is about access and ease of use and cataloguing, that piracy is about getting something for free rather than paying for it.
Indeed!
http://www.lostlevels.org
The video game companies sure aren't taking the necessary steps towards digital preservation. Just recently Konami tried to vaporize P.T.
Horsemama1956
Member
Never even heard of them.
Not remotely the same thing. Pretty much everyone has numerous ways to pay for physical music that is entirely platform agnostic (record store, walmart, or internet). It'll play in my car, in my xbox, on my desktop and I can take that music and easily transcode it to a number of formats which will then play across every device on my network at the identical quality. As someone who checked the top 10 nearly every day for nearly 9 years....the majority of albums people downloaded followed the pitchfork/stereogum/ and internet blogosphere review lists along with a mix of top 40. I'm not claiming that the community, the collages, similar artist discovery stuff all ending is not a sad thing. Like I said, I was there from the beginning for both oink and what.cd. The only site on the internet I have visited more on a day to day basis is NeoGAF. I'm just not in denial over what the site actually was and I understand why RIAA and countries are pressured to investigate and shut them down.
It's basically the biggest collection of music, likely on the ENTIRE INTERNET. I'm not kidding. You didn't have an issue finding even the most obscure albums on the site. In fact, you would have more trouble NOT finding an album on the site. It was massive.
I'm not surprised they shut down, it was only a matter of time.
You could buy "In Rainbows" for any amount of money you wanted from directly from their site upon release. Radiohead also sold that damn CD physical AT STARBUCKS. That was how common the album was.
Systolique
Member
I don't know yet if I should print this post, this might be a better epitaph for what.cd's homepage than their goodbye message.
Why is it always the people that know the less who yell the hardest?
Got the Shakes
Member
This. I honestly don't think a lot of people realize that this was the most comprehensive digital archive of music out there. Streaming services have made life easy, and I subscribe to Apple Music because of how simple it is to use with my iPhone. Even with the proliferation of streaming services What was always going to have a use for music lovers especially ones that cared about lossless files.
Cyberbully
Banned
Fucking sucks.
They had FLAC's of certain songs you couldn't get elsewhere, not even purchasable.
They had FLAC's of certain songs you couldn't get elsewhere, not even purchasable.
I also don't think people realize that a good majority of the obscure stuff you find on youtube now can be sourced back to someone grabbing it off what.cd. It was the central source for the obscure, rare, OOP etc. If you wanted to find something that got little or not proper distribution and you couldn't find it on what, it likely didn't exist in an attainable form.
This. Unbelievable.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
The evidence would seem directly contradict this -- music piracy has dramatically declined across all public sources as the majority of pirates turned to streaming services. In the mean time, the music piracy outlets that persist are largely enthusiast-focused members-only piracy outlets focusing on rarities, b-sides, oddities, high quality rips, etc none of which are served by legal services. It's difficult to read from this that the bulk of music piracy had nothing to do with easy access to legal content. You're replying to someone who asked incredulously "Wait, music piracy still exists?" precisely because it is not a mainstream or common activity anymore.
This is not an ethical defence of the act of piracy; rather, using your own attempt to impute motive to piracy by looking at aggregate piracy stats.
Even in this thread you see people
clearly circumventing GAF rules on piracy discussion
uncelestial
Member
Sure, sure, I don't know anything. Also the massive decline in music torrenting that correlates with the rise of streaming services like Spotify is a mere coincidence -- kind of like the coincidence where earthquakes in the Midwest shot up 27,000% after fracking began. Nobody was using these sites to simply not pay for music. They were all using them to distribute obscure JRPG soundtrack releases that don't have any legal means of distribution, and totally ignoring commercially available music. I fully believe that, and I'm sure if you looked at the seeder/leecher stats on popular music sites, that would back that up.
And also, it's obvious that music torrenting is a way better way to find music than review sites, YouTube, SoundCloud, blogs, Bandcamp, Pandora, and shared playlists, none of which require you to download anything, have a media player installed, manage physical files, or even wait longer than a few seconds. What people like to do is hear the name of a band on a music site that embeds the media directly on the page -- then ignore that media, and log in to a torrent site so they can download it -- THEN finally listen to it and check it out. I'm truly an idiot for arguing that instantly streaming embedded media makes *THAT* use case obsolete, huh? Sorry you had to tolerate my dumb ideas on that one. Now I get it.
</sarcasm>
Look -- if you were really just sticking to non-commercially-available stuff, fine, I get torrenting, and it's hard to argue against it. But many sites have rules that try to color between the lines on that -- take for example the Zomb tracker, which specializes in non-commercially-released live recordings and actively bans commercially-released live recordings. What.cd was not that site, and didn't give a shit about it. To argue that it wasn't a place that enabled wholesale theft of music that was commercially available is normalizing something that robs a struggling industry of much-needed revenue. No, I don't have to agree with you that that site was okay, or that you had no other way of "discovering music," because it wasn't, and you did. There are hundreds of places to discover music, for free, right now, that put money in the musicians' tip jars. Start giving a shit.
Good riddance to what.cd. If you want an commercially-unavailable music tracker, go start one.
quickwhips
Member
I feel like torrents are such a thing of the past.
Jawbreaker
Member
Wow, what a huge blow to music archival. At least Soulseek is still around.
NervousXtian
Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
I quit that scene when OiNK died... but damn.. what a loss. Properly tagged, high quality rare releases. So much of that stuff is almost impossible to find any other way these days.
ThanksVision
Member
Uncelestial still mad bc he couldn't catch an invite. Still laughing at "pitchfork best" tbh
MrCunningham
Member
It's the modern equivalent of recording music from the radio with a tape deck .
But yeah, it is gross.
I still think you're not getting it. You list a bunch of different resources to find different musical suggestions, while what existed as a space where you could find relevant suggestions for similar artists all in one place. As I mentioned before, I tried your hypem link and I honestly just couldn't figure it out I guess. I was looking for suggestions for a band similar to D.N.A. and I think I'm doing something wrong. Nothing seemed to be coming up. Spotify doesn't feature D.N.A. either (from what I could find). I went to Pandora, and success! D.N.A. are there. The first recommendation though? Pet Shop Boys, which isn't even a remotely close suggestion.
All this hunting around, I haven't found any compelling suggestions. If what.cd was up, I'd look at the artist collage and instantly be able to find suggestions with direct links to their music.
I don't quite get your rationale that having to search multiple sites where ymmv is somehow a superior means of finding suggestions than having one consolidated and accurate resource. One that's fueled by passionate fans of every imaginable genre.
Atom Heart Mother
Banned
I'll use streaming when my bands are on there.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Those who have been inside know what we've lost today:
There was something nothing else like it. Those who think it's comparable to something like Napster or common Torrent sites simply don't understand and may never understand. Had to be there. How to see it and its community in operation. Had to see the special editions and releases that never came to your country. The 24/96 and vinyl rips to albums from the 40s, 50s, 60s. The obscure stuff (older, less common, less widely distributed) that would never and will never be on Apple Music or Spotify. The opportunity to discover artists and albums you would have never heard of before, curated and cultivated by the most passionate people anywhere.
An invite was the proverbial golden ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. If you missed it, you missed it...and you really have no idea. The internet's single greatest musical archive and discovery tool. Gone too soon.
So say we all.
There was something nothing else like it. Those who think it's comparable to something like Napster or common Torrent sites simply don't understand and may never understand. Had to be there. How to see it and its community in operation. Had to see the special editions and releases that never came to your country. The 24/96 and vinyl rips to albums from the 40s, 50s, 60s. The obscure stuff (older, less common, less widely distributed) that would never and will never be on Apple Music or Spotify. The opportunity to discover artists and albums you would have never heard of before, curated and cultivated by the most passionate people anywhere.
An invite was the proverbial golden ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. If you missed it, you missed it...and you really have no idea. The internet's single greatest musical archive and discovery tool. Gone too soon.
So say we all.
tearsofash
Member
Have you been on soulseek lately? It's pretty dead.
I still have a few private sites I'm on for obscure out of print stuff, but What.cd being gone is a huge loss.
uncelestial
Member
Which is funnier - arguing that torrenting was the best way to discover music even though instantly pressing play and getting free music on thousands of sites is now a thing, or suggesting that people... read Pitchfork for music recommendations? Which, you know, millions of people do.
If you're asserting that my throwing out that idea was the sum total of my ideas for music discovery, that's basically willfully ignoring what I'm saying and the state of the industry. Here is an aggregate of top-rated "Future Garage" songs -- whatever that even is. Pandora can build a radio station based off your enjoyment of the Final Fantasy IV OST and ensconce you in video game soundtracks all day long. Review sites everywhere embed music right on the page with accompanying descriptions and review scores to draw you in. Streaming services like Spotify and Google all have socialization of fan-curated playlists -- and people are amazing at creating them. YouTube and SoundCloud can both take you on autopilot through their recommendation engine if you just play any track on them.
It's ridiculous to act like these instantly accessible, free, artist-supporting options pale in comparison to stealing physical files off a fucking torrent site. That's not "discovering music," that's cramming your trenchcoat full of CDs at the record store and running home. Lose me with this shit.
Dreams-Visions
Member
Sad given the quality of the audio.
NumberThree
Member
This really sucks.
HarryHengst
Member
most people cant hear the difference anyway, especially not on the shitty earbuds Apple includes with an iphone.
nooooo 
Truly an incredible resource. I remember uploading some hopelessly obscure demo EPs I had amassed from gigs I'd been to over the years. I think I've left most of them in Canada, forever lost yet there they were on what.cd.
No longer, sadly, along with many similar types of obscure stuff.
Truly an incredible resource. I remember uploading some hopelessly obscure demo EPs I had amassed from gigs I'd been to over the years. I think I've left most of them in Canada, forever lost yet there they were on what.cd.
No longer, sadly, along with many similar types of obscure stuff.
And then listen to it on public transport through their phone speakers. Even more gross, especially if they're listening to anything that's supposed to be bass heavy.
I really hope this is a troll post, but i'm pretty sure you're just an idiot.
CD's are not that high quality.
To the topic, I didn't use it enough and had my account terminated some time ago but it was an excellent site. Lots of stuff that was entirely trustable which couldn't be found elsewhere. I've considered reactivating my account once or twice but I know i'd not use it enough.
Better quality than streaming, and can make your own FLACs. Better than downloading anything illegally which people in this thread are happily discussing
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