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Comment by zelag | Hacker News Reader

oink and what.cd. Ahh, the memories.

what.cd was one of the greatest resources available on the Internet, in my opinion. Still sad it's gone. :-(

I mean this without hyperbole. Loseing what.cd was one of the saddest moments of my life. Losing it was on a tier below the burning of the library of alexandria, but only a single tier.

What.cd was a massive loss for the entire internet.

Some of What's Vanity house stars are now real stars with tours around the world, like "The Flashbulb"

You too found The Flashbulb via what.cd? Soundtrack to a Vacant Life is an incredible album.

Yes I sure did. That album may have been a vanity house "staff pick" too, I don't recall. Pink and What felt like magical places... Terra Firma, what a massive tune. https://youtu.be/HwbVnFR-XP4

I also found Flashbulb via what.cd vanity. Good stuff

Yet another rewrite project that went nowhere, if I remember correctly. Or was that waffles.fm? I'm probably confusing the two.

edit: ok I did confuse them, see reply

You're thinking waffles.fm -- what.cd was seized by authorities. waffles didn't even come close to the glory of what.cd

Would you happen to know if the story is written out anywhere?

https://torrentfreak.com/what-cd-shuts-down-following-report...

https://torrentfreak.com/music-group-confirms-what-cd-raid-c...

41m € of alleged losses. And for that want, the library of Alexandria was burned down.

I haven't used it myself, but I've heard REDACTED comes close to what.cd , you might have to interview again though.

Redacted hasn't quite rebuilt What.CD's full library, but it's getting remarkably close. Streaming services have taken some of the vigor out of the torrent scene, but I think it's safe to say What's all-music-archive dream is alive.

It might be a little late now, but in the early days, they seemed more than happy to have former What.CD users (provided they were in good standing) on board. There was an interview, but it wasn't a big deal.

This article came out soon after it was gone: https://qz.com/840661/what-cd-is-gone-a-eulogy-for-the-great...

It put things into perspective for many.

Met a lot of my best friends through there. Still hurts is gone.

Rare too see a mention of Oinks Pink Palace. Such an amazing site and community. What and Waffles were never the same thing.

I agree. Oink was VERY good and also very friendly. They also had a silly rule that "all avatars MUST be cute"

I think it was even "all avatars MUST be cute animals".

Yeah spot on, cute rule, I have carried that over into other community forums I used to run :)

Definitely a go-to but I used as well, up until it went dark within last couple years, the nmp3s off-shoot from SAF all those years ago.

too bad nothing like oink exists anymore, I remember being an early uploader of some interpol albums. Also people just had great music tastes, you could go to any genre and sort and find heavy hitters you didnt know, who were amazing.

>too bad nothing like oink exists anymore

red, ops, slsk

what.cd was one the most incredible archive of music ever created, happily spent £10/mo on a seedbox to support it and had a bunch of scripts to auto-seed things to get some sort of ridiculous ratio.

The powers that be truly did destroy something great, if there's a tracker that's anything like it I'd happily rent a seedbox again.

Even now most music streaming services will only give you a single crummy option of the album version to listen to, usually some stupid remaster, AM sometimes gives lets you listen to the original but it's far from perfect.

Oink was such a great site, I remember feverishly following tutorials to rip my CDS in FLAC format with specific encoders just to boost my s/l ratio.

RIP

The replacement is just as good, if not better.

Try redacted or Orpheus

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