True but What.cd had a tremendous amount of notable music not available on Spotify though because it was also sourced from cds, bootlegs, vinyl, tape etc whereas Spotify only includes music explicitly licensed for streaming.

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Etheryte a day ago | parent | next [-]

This is true and a category of music that got hit notably hard was live recordings. What had a wide array of live recordings made by sound engineers straight from the mixer. This is something that you simply cannot find now unless you maybe know a guy.

	▲	qingcharles a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		That's why I use YouTube Music as my streamer as they allow damned near anyone to upload any old rare record and then figure out the royalties somehow.
	▲	alxndr 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		FWIW archive.org has a lot of live music as well

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leetbulb a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes. RIP a ton of very rare material. What.cd has a special place in my heart.

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some-guy a day ago | parent [-]

Redacted.sh is a worthy successor, but the average person just doesn’t care about “which release is best” anymore. I use YT Music as a backup but Redacted is my main source of music these days.

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karamanolev a day ago | parent | next [-]

Don't you consider it best to ... redact ... your post, as it's the only one mentioning it by name?

	▲	sincerely 19 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's hardly a secret, you can go on r/trackers where people discuss private trackers for every media type
	▲	fragmede a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Some people just don't know when to shut the hell up.

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selectodude a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

At the end of the day it feels like the private trackers are such a nightmare to get invited to and maintain ratio at it’s just not worth the effort.

I want this torrent though. It would be fun to stand up a NAS for this.

	▲	some-guy 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The private trackers are just as much about the community as they are about the content they host. Of course there are trade offs because communities can be very insular. I’ve noticed in the past 10 years or so private trackers have become less strict because the economics of ratios only works if either a) everyone is equally uploading new material and b) there are more and more signups. So now there is value in the amount of time you seed your content which lowers your “required” ratio.

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udev4096 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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tclancy a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, it was a great place. I have a paid Spotify account but finally got an ancient hard drive onto my network for all sorts of stuff Spotify doesn’t or can’t have (e.g., Coldcut: 70 Minutes of Madness).

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BoingBoomTschak 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Which also means almost always limited to the latest, almost always crappy (or blind to the original ambiance) remaster! One of the main reasons why I don't bother with streaming, really.

(And because they lack much obscure stuff and I don't like being dependent on the Internet and a renter's whims for something as essential as music, I guess)

	▲	TonyTrapp 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This, a thousand times this. I have gone back to collecting CDs because it's often the only remaining way (short of pircay) to get original masters of many artists. Even lossless download stores like Qobuz don't have them.