Define free? Constant viruses, trauma from seeing killings and executions. Was it worth it? Sure but it wasn’t free
Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Learning to torrent is what greatly increased my computer literacy when I was a kid.
Or dumb songs with swooshes in them lol
Weird Al Yankovic - Oops I’m Pregnant Again (REAL).mp3
It was remarkable how much fake Weird Al music there was. Someone maintained a helpful “Not Al” list.
Ahhhh, back when every punk cover song was done by Pennywise.
Funny how, despite corporate trying it’s hardest to kill it, we’ve only managed to get better, more organized and safer with file sharing (and perhaps because of them, in many ways).
It was Metallica.
Edit: Metallica killed Napster, the others didn’t want a lawsuit, Kim Dotcom… Yeah that’s a saga
YES!!! I just want to take the normies with me.
I feel like I have more availability to get what I want now, than when I was using Limewire/Kazaa/Napster/eMule/etc.
If it was super popular, you could get it. If it was obscure, uncommon, niche, and other synonyms, if you did find it 90% of the time it was simply given an incorrect name and wasn’t actually what you wanted.
I used to have a demonoid account and kept my seed ratio high just because that private tracker had the biggest collection of random ass music and movies you couldn’t find anywhere else. Unreleased shit and whatnot.
If it was obscure, uncommon, niche, and other synonyms, if you did find it 90% of the time it was simply given an incorrect name and wasn’t actually what you wanted.
This is literally how I got introduced to several bands I never would have heard otherwise. Missing one track off one album, downloading…this definitely isn’t the right track, but who is this? And now I need to download another 8 albums by that band…
I used to have a demonoid account too! Back then I could just torrent anything without a care…
Now I would need a VPN and a ton of reading to even begin. Sad times.
Private trackers have gotten way better. I think they’ve figured out how to retain obscure and rare things. At least RED, GGn, OPH, BTN and PTP have. I’m sure there are others.
Come back to torrenting if you feel trapped by subscriptions and enshittification. There is a bar to entry, but it ain’t too bad.
I do miss the weird fake tracks. There was a whole 3rd “Portishead” album that fake.
I kinda wanna look up who actually made that “Link, he come to town!” song. Because it sure as hell was not System of a Down. lol
Know anyone with invites to acid lounge? I let my account lapse for like 5 years, and cannot get back in, bo matter how many attempts at requesting.
Among many other misattributed MP3s I downloaded off LimeWire, I remember downloading an mp3 of a “new leaked Nine Inch Nails song” called “Digital” that even had an intro read by a some DJ on a radio station (supposedly).
It ended up not being Nine Inch Nails, but I loved the song anyway, and had no idea what it was until a decade later when I found it again online. Still fuckin rocks too:
Boom Boom Satellites - Push Eject
I also remember a Tetris Theme remix by Aphex Twin that was very much not Aphex Twin.
I also remember downloading the Aphex Twin remix of Beck’s "Devil’s Haircut"and the remix was so bad I thought it had to be fake (it’s not).
I actually still have songs in my playlist that I discovered the same way. A lot of the saints were incorrectly labeled so it was hard to make sure you got the right one without listening to it. Found a lot of unknown artists this way.
Somewhere in my files I still have the file of a hoarse, cracked male voice singing along to Ricky Martin’s “Bailamos”, purportedly recorded from Martin’s mic by a sound tech when he was lip synching live on stage.
Probably fake, but I want to believe.
Dude what is this Tetris one. I remember this too.
I also remember some some that was by a dj called dj triangle and it was a super high tempo song with all kinds of songs mixed in. Haven’t found it since those days.
Still can brother 🏴☠️
For those wondering check out Soulseek clients like Nicotine+. Even better, these days most of the files are well tagged.
Set to search only file sizes of >320 and revel in limitless FLACs.
Including NIMDA!
In 2001 my Uni’s entire campus network was shut down for 3 days to clean up a massive NIMDA infection. Wild times.
“Turbo-Charged Connection”
252kbit/s
Hot damn! I can listen to the song I want about 2 hours from now!
And sometimes things you really really didn’t want.
I once downloaded a 650MB movie in less than 10 minutes. I dont know how that was possible at the time as I had a sub 1 mbit line. I just know I went to the bathroom and came back to a downloaded movie. Always figured it was a bug of some kind on the modem as apparently the cable modem was doing the rate limiting.
Misattribution killed Limewire. Downloading a song that turned out to be something different was annoying, but downloaded porn sometimes turned out to be actual CP.
Still is
*arr.
no one has mentioned SoulSeek yet
Specifically nicotine+.
slskd, soularr, lidarr :p
in my defense Theres a lot of comments
This! Also, I have never found a single incorrect naming there.
Hey does anyone remember searching for the movie XXX with Vin Diesel? What a fun time…
