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What.cd shut down


Rubin Farr

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but it's "free publicity" dude!!

 

edit: if there  was a tracker for 100% out of print stuff  that wasn't available anywhere digitally, how many people would *really*  be satisifed with that? that would truly make it worth protecting, and i'm pretty sure no one would raid their servers either.

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I guess being poor shuts me out of intellectually fun things that cost money then. Great to know, it's not enough to already be treated as a second-class citizen and general bad person.

 

I am sure there are people who would never buy the music that they downloaded anyways, but I guarantee that there are also those that buy the music that they initially also downloaded illegally, being the only avenue of actually hearing it at all. But the argument as mentioned is getting thinner today with all the streaming and bandcamp like services. I guess it's now more down to convenience of having all your music in one place, accessible anytime instead of having to access different sources to listen to it for free. Many times it happened that I've download something that took a few listens before growing on me enough for me to end up buying it. I guess I will need to re-adjust my dislike of buying only digital files, which in some cases aren't much cheaper than the actual physical medium.

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Dude, I feel for you, completely. But when you put that last on the priority list, someone still pays for your indiscretion. In some cases, it might be "the man" and that's fine, but in others, like mine and EOD's and many other artists who post here, it's people who eat Ramen noodles all the time and worry about their electricity getting turned off. Maybe they don't rely on music for income, like I do, but I'm still willing to bet they don't appreciate this kind of stuff. Out of print and rare, sure, we can all agree that there's some understanding there. But like noise said, that doesn't actually account for most of the stuff people pirate.

 

Anyway, all I mean to say is that I'm poor enough to get food stamps, and I don't use that fact to justify stealing from the people I actually respect. If I can't afford it, I don't buy it. If I can stream it legitimately via the artist's Bandcamp, as opposed to YouTube etc, then I will, but otherwise I don't even listen to something until I've paid for it.

 

Being poor sucks, I get it. But so does being told that your creative work is great enough to listen to, but not great enough to pay for.

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I just want the obscure electronic stuff in digital bc I'm not in a spot I want to purchase a million records at the moment. Someone should start an archival digitization service that pays out properly to the people involved originally.

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Since the arrival of bleep/bandcamp/beatport I've only used what incidentally. When there was no other option left. And when I mean no other option, I mean even youtube was not being helpful. Because the irony is that I used whatcd just out of curiosity. Checking stuff I couldn't find -or listen to- otherwise. And in those cases often ending up underwhelmed, btw. So it was an effective tool for cleaning up my want-list.

Not sure what I'm going to do now. But it's not the end of the world.

 

*remembers oink*

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i used it, but didn't take it for granted. the fact that it's gone is like water off a ducks back, but this comment a friend of friend said on my facbook really hit home..

its (what.cd's) wealth as an archive of expiring music was immense, and all it took was an invite to get in. my mom would be shocked when i'd pull out iranian pop and classical recordings she hadn't heard since her childhood, because suddenly, all of that history exists in more than just memory! idk. i will miss that ability to freely navigate genealogies of music

me too, man. me too...

 

 

what if they had it all backed up somehow and this is a just a shifty relocation :o

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A landmark loss imo, the comparison to Alexandria is less hyperbolic than it usually is. The completeness and detail of the collection was unprecedented. Curation is what separated what.cd from every other torrent community. Eager to see what will come next.

 

Exactly. 

 

They've burned down the greatest music library in the history of humankind. 

Community and cultural value included. 

 

What.cd was one of the reasons I started listening to more music, searching for different genres of music outside of my comfortable horizon, discovering music I never thought existed and actually liked very much, and appreciating music as a true form of art.

What.cd got me into collecting vinyl records, going to festivals and parties, just because I could find and listen to music so easily, obscure or not, well structured, in good quality, and with a lot of people who could inform you of their opinion and taste. 

 

It feels like growing up with something that partly made me in the person I am today, and have that taken away. 

I'm a bit emotional, but this feels like a very dark day for me. 

 

I really liked what.cd.

I can only hope that one day something similar reappears, although it will never be the same. 

 

T.T

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just found out about this now, shit. wasn't actually all that amazing in terms of obscure shit, I could always upload a few obscure library music rips if I needed the ratio, but it was pretty good.

 

I also buy music btw, nothing wrong with doing both. it's not stealing if you wouldn't have bought something in the first place.

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i would switch to spottily and ditch pirating for sure, but:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Availability_of_Spotify_in_the_World.svg

tried tidal today because it's actually available in the zionist regime. it kinda sucked balls from a very brief trial i had with it. the left-of-pitchfork artists are not that well covered at all, very few singles and eps. you can supplement it with your own stuff of course, but it just adds more hassle.

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A landmark loss imo, the comparison to Alexandria is less hyperbolic than it usually is. The completeness and detail of the collection was unprecedented. Curation is what separated what.cd from every other torrent community. Eager to see what will come next.

 

Exactly. 

 

They've burned down the greatest music library in the history of humankind. 

Community and cultural value included. 

 

What.cd was one of the reasons I started listening to more music, searching for different genres of music outside of my comfortable horizon, discovering music I never thought existed and actually liked very much, and appreciating music as a true form of art.

What.cd got me into collecting vinyl records, going to festivals and parties, just because I could find and listen to music so easily, obscure or not, well structured, in good quality, and with a lot of people who could inform you of their opinion and taste. 

 

It feels like growing up with something that partly made me in the person I am today, and have that taken away. 

I'm a bit emotional, but this feels like a very dark day for me. 

 

I really liked what.cd.

I can only hope that one day something similar reappears, although it will never be the same. 

 

T.T

 

the library burning bullshit is getting on my tits already, if all the people from wcd simply came to soulseek and shared their shit, then the "library" would be instantly restored. of course none of them would do that because they need to measure dicks with their seedboxes and ratios and shit in some kind of elitist closed private tracker and wont actually share something for public without being rewarded with some virtual cred points or something.

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Sad to hear in a way, but also kind of a relief. I hope more people bring their collection of rare and obscure material to SLSK. I buy new releases on Bandcamp, but for old vinyl-only shit, there needs to be SOMEWHERE... I had switched to SLSk anyway as What.cd ratio is BS, people with seed boxes dominate uploads completely, making it impossible to maintain ratio. Paying 3rd parties that have nothing to do with the music so you can maintain ratio is totally anti-P2P bullshit. SLSK is democratic, long live SLSK

 

(For rare out of print material..)

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it's not stealing if you wouldn't have bought something in the first place.

Your logic here is hilarious.

 

 

Why's that?

 

You can't steal something from someone without actually taking something from someone; a digital transfer of data does not take something from anyone it merely creates more data. At a stretch you could make a moral argument that depriving an artist of their income is 'like' stealing, a metaphorical theft, but that's about it, and it's only depriving them of income if it's income they would have got if it weren't for the availability of the free copy, and in many cases that simply wouldn't be the case.

 

In most cases the act of downloading a copyrighted work isn't even illegal, depending on the jurisdiction (it's usually the distribution part that's out of bounds, and even then only usually criminal when done for profit).

 

People should support the music they enjoy of course, but people have limited resources, and if there's a free source of material they have access to above what they're capable of paying for what's the harm is in them availing themselves of that? There really isn't any evidence that piracy has negatively affected the incomes of musicians (the corrupted and outmoded publishing and distribution systems, along with an ever increasingly fragmented marketplace, have a far greater impact on that), and while there are no doubt people who abuse the system, it's a pretty tiny percentage of the consuming public who do that, it's only a drop in the bucket at the end of the day. Most people are casual listeners who pay for streaming services (something which to be honest isn't a very fair use of their money) or are older people who buy the occasional cd, music obsessives who torrent music spend a lot more money on it than casual listeners as well, it's only a subset of them who are total freeloaders.

 

https://torrentfreak.com/pirates-spend-much-more-money-on-music-study-shows-160226/

 

Torrents and the like allow people to be a lot more judicious with the use of their cash as well - starving major record labels of their profits until they finally go bankrupt seems like an inherently moral thing to do to be honest, and in the meantime people can instead support independent producers via bandcamp and similar. This isn't something that is really happening sadly (at least not fast enough), but it would be nice. We're currently in a transition phase between the old inefficient system and a far more equitable one that's entirely technically possible, but merely being held back by various vested interests, it won't last though, the old and shitty will die out in the end as it always does (the music industry is no different to the coal mining, it's outlived it's usefulness to society, time to let it die).

 

The new system wouldn't guarantee any musician a right to make a living off their work of course, something which is getting increasingly common in what is a ridiculously fragmented marketplace (incomparable to any other stage of human culture), but that's a part of a broader problem with society in general and not something that's going to be fixed by closing down torrent sites.

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here's another one: you're full of shit and I don't need to read that garbage mini-essay to know it. acquiring a paid thing without paying for it is stealing, if you can't face that then you got bigger problems, son. I say that as someone who pays on an exceptions basis myself. least I feel guilty about it.

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here's another one: you're full of shit and I don't need to read that garbage mini-essay to know it. acquiring a paid thing without paying for it is stealing, if you can't face that then you got bigger problems, son. I say that as someone who pays on an exceptions basis myself. least I feel guilty about it.

 

no, it's not. for reasons explained above, if you had read it you would have become educated, but stay dumb, no skin off my back. if you want you could even try and engage in debate, but I guess you'd rather make shitty little snide comments all the time because I guess that's the kind of guy you are.

 

I did actually go through a period of freeloading in my 20s, felt guilty about it, then started paying. Try and keep to a target of a certain amount I can afford every month now, which is easy to hit via bandcamp and bleep for the most part.

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caze: I just read your explanation, and like every other person's "why stealing isn't stealing" it's full of shit. It actually made me dumber just reading it. Download as much as you want but stop making stupid excuses for it. It really doesn't matter what you say. Mellow U and usagi are on point. Acquiring a paid thing without paying for it is stealing, and it doesn't matter how many times you tries to explain why it's not.

 

You are wrong, FFS.

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caze: I just read your explanation, and like every other person's "why stealing isn't stealing" it's full of shit. It actually made me dumber just reading it. Download as much as you want but stop making stupid excuses for it. It really doesn't matter what you say. Mellow U and usagi are on point. Acquiring a paid thing without paying for it is stealing, and it doesn't matter how many times you tries to explain why it's not.

 

You are wrong, FFS.

 

why am I wrong? 'stealing is stealing' isn't an argument. I'm not acquiring any paid things, I'm acquiring copies of them, even the law recognises this, which is why it's not a criminal offence.

usagi is most definitely not dumb.  :nope:

 

perhaps, he's certainly making more of an effort to demonstrate he's an arse than that he's not dumb though.

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theoretically it's very simple really.

if you would buy the music you downloaded for free if you didn't have the means to pirate it - then you are practically causing financial harm to the musicians by your piracy, and this is, more or less, similar to stealing. but if you wouldn't - then it wouldn't change anything for the artists financially speaking.

 

of course those are very sterile and experimental conditions and archetypes, the actual piracy via bittorent or just sharing stuff on slsk makes you an enabler of sorts by seeding stuff to other people, people who might be either one of the two types mentioned above. another thing that is often mentioned is that piracy can act as a popularizer of music as well and thus actually benefit musicians in some degree, but it's even more difficult to disentangle from its potential harm. moreover it most probably all varies by genre and other groups musicians and music fans get clustered in. mainstream musicians probably get fucked, but perhaps some more indier ones can derive some net benefit from piracy as wide phenomena.

 

obviously the notion that downloaded copies of album multiplied by price of album=financial loss to the actual musician is bollocks and is just propaganda, not useful info.

 

(btw, i pirate everything because i strongly believe that for artist to achieve spiritual purity and creative peak, he/she need to be fucking poor, so my conscience is clear.)

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