I was Oink obsessed and had a massive collection, individually ripped, from my college days, so I had a lot of original uploads. With a huge ratio margin, that place was a candy store. Followed by...
I was Oink obsessed and had a massive collection, individually ripped, from my college days, so I had a lot of original uploads. With a huge ratio margin, that place was a candy store.
Followed by what.cd, where I was even more ridiculous. But I can get a little obsessive.
Things are much easier to access legally now, but there's been a constant tug-of-war that makes it very expensive to keep immediate access to everything across various services. Finally with family plans we have a reasonable solution, but that's 25 years after the digital piracy wars started for me.
Books and academic journals are a whole other story. That's a truly entrenched, diseased market.
Those trackers were so complete and had so much information, formats, details, tag quality, and availability of rare and out-of-print stuff, losing them was like losing a library of wonders. No...
Those trackers were so complete and had so much information, formats, details, tag quality, and availability of rare and out-of-print stuff, losing them was like losing a library of wonders.
No legal means of acquiring music has ever come even close to matching the breadth, completeness, and abundance of choice. Certainly the music industry has tried to fill that void some by offering various things (streaming, etc) but they'll never be able to offer something that truly competes with what we had.
The wikipedia article is a decent summary. It was the best music piracy site of all time. It was fairly easy to get into (which became a big issue with successors for obvious reasons). Pre-release...
The wikipedia article is a decent summary. It was the best music piracy site of all time. It was fairly easy to get into (which became a big issue with successors for obvious reasons). Pre-release leaks galore, you were listening to albums weeks or months before the rest of the world. None said it better than Trent Reznor in a fantastic interview which really gives a snapshot of the times.
To set the stage: This was fresh off his release of Year Zero earlier this year, a fantastic concept album about dystopian 2022, eerily precient of what America has become. It (and its music videos) should be mandatory watching. It had a great ARG priming its release, and Reznor was pissed at Interscope, and was priming to go independent again. Less than a month after this interview, he was encouraging Aussies at his tours to pirate his albums because he was sick of how badly Interscope was ripping them off.
The NIN album he was working on in this interview was Ghosts I, where he did end up following through and releasing it as a completely free digital download in 2008. This album was a taste of what Reznor is mostly likely known for by most of you (relatively) young ones who were but babies circa 2000: His soundtrack work with Atticus Ross.
Anyway here's the money quote. Do read the full interview though, especially if you came of age after 2014.
What do you think about OiNK being shut down? Trent: I’ll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world’s greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn’t the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don’t feel cool when I go there. I’m tired of seeing John Mayer’s face pop up. I feel like I’m being hustled when I visit there, and I don’t think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that’s what’s such a difficult puzzle at the moment. If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they’re grateful for the person that uploaded it — they’re the hero. They’re not stealing it because they’re going to make money off of it; they’re stealing it because they love the band. I’m not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.
The rise of Spotify and alternatives really helped in this vein, but many still suffer many of these same problems of trying to 'nudge' you.
The successors to Oink pale in comparison, yet still provide some of the best music discovery tools on the planet. I've spent more on music since joining one of these than I have on all the years after paying for YTM as a result.
I'm sad I missed out on that. I remember something called grooveshark, and there as all the cd sale site where you would buy a "cd", that the company "stored" for you and provided you with digital...
I'm sad I missed out on that. I remember something called grooveshark, and there as all the cd sale site where you would buy a "cd", that the company "stored" for you and provided you with digital downloads in the format of your choice. Grooveshark was really awesome, too. It had like, pretty much everything, super easy, and a very straightforward interface that put your search and your preferences at the front, a place where modern services seem to fail.
But the best musical discovery service I ever encountered was alt.binaries.music. I had a little gig as a dj for a short time, and my success was due in large part to the cool tracks I found there that no-one else had. It was also almost cool to use your computer as source in those days, but that's beside the point.
Also a sad note for Pandora. When it first came out, it was really good at playing songs that I hadn't heard before and that I really liked. Even on the paid tiers, today, I rarely hear songs that I haven't heard before, and that I would have heard already even back when Pandora was better. And when I do hear new songs, it's not music I really like (this may be and unfortunate side effect of "maturity.")
At this point in time the main successors could be argued to have surpassed OiNK. Maybe not in terms of the community, but in terms of the vast reach of the library that they had/have. Having said...
At this point in time the main successors could be argued to have surpassed OiNK. Maybe not in terms of the community, but in terms of the vast reach of the library that they had/have.
Having said that I did miss out on OiNK entirely, so I can only judge by what I saw that came afterwards, but feel a similar loss for What.CD. rip rippy
What.cd surpassed in total content, because it caught a lot of refugees from OiNK and also because it lasted almost 7 years longer. It was the direct successor, founding the day after OiNK's...
What.cd surpassed in total content, because it caught a lot of refugees from OiNK and also because it lasted almost 7 years longer. It was the direct successor, founding the day after OiNK's shuttering.
And it's exclusivity brought safety, but also lack of cultural spread.
True and then the same again for What.cd successors, which I believe the biggest of is closing in on the age that What reached. Though as others have said for the most people, music is a solved...
True and then the same again for What.cd successors, which I believe the biggest of is closing in on the age that What reached.
Though as others have said for the most people, music is a solved problem with the likes of Spotify, Amazon Music and Youtube Music covering that space with their own vast library's of easy to access music.
A good question (for @mantrid too)! From the 2020 Tildes Census, though hopefully our demographics changed a bit.... we need an updated one methinks. The largest decile was 21-30. Which means I...
From the 2020 Tildes Census, though hopefully our demographics changed a bit.... we need an updated one methinks.
The largest decile was 21-30. Which means I have at least 6 years on the largest cohort, and the combined "under 30" crowd was 2/3 of the site. If we assume that the demographics have held, there's a decent 1/3 or more that would have been babies when I graduated highschool.
Maybe us active posters skew older. But I also wasn't assuming, I was throwing a pointer to those who are.
There are undoubtably people on this site, reading this comment, who were born after that interview was done. Some of them might not have even seen The Interview. So I think it's important to highlight for them an important piece of music history, even if they're not the majoirity.
I think the largest decile in 2020 being 21-30 would make it more likely that in 2024, most users are in their late 20s/early 30s (assuming the same population, ofc, which we can't really). But I...
I think the largest decile in 2020 being 21-30 would make it more likely that in 2024, most users are in their late 20s/early 30s (assuming the same population, ofc, which we can't really).
But I also think a lot of the other relatively older folks here are overestimating how young you have to be to have come of age past this era. I just turned 28 last week, and I turned 4 in 2000. Spotify (and its competitors like Apple Music) took over. Someone born the same year OiNK launched would be in their early 20s. The population of people who wouldn't have been old enough to know about that interview with Tren Reznor is older than a lot of millennials and Gen X think it is.
Whew. I still have PTSD from OiNK. RIP
I was Oink obsessed and had a massive collection, individually ripped, from my college days, so I had a lot of original uploads. With a huge ratio margin, that place was a candy store.
Followed by what.cd, where I was even more ridiculous. But I can get a little obsessive.
Things are much easier to access legally now, but there's been a constant tug-of-war that makes it very expensive to keep immediate access to everything across various services. Finally with family plans we have a reasonable solution, but that's 25 years after the digital piracy wars started for me.
Books and academic journals are a whole other story. That's a truly entrenched, diseased market.
Those trackers were so complete and had so much information, formats, details, tag quality, and availability of rare and out-of-print stuff, losing them was like losing a library of wonders.
No legal means of acquiring music has ever come even close to matching the breadth, completeness, and abundance of choice. Certainly the music industry has tried to fill that void some by offering various things (streaming, etc) but they'll never be able to offer something that truly competes with what we had.
What is “oink”?
The wikipedia article is a decent summary. It was the best music piracy site of all time. It was fairly easy to get into (which became a big issue with successors for obvious reasons). Pre-release leaks galore, you were listening to albums weeks or months before the rest of the world. None said it better than Trent Reznor in a fantastic interview which really gives a snapshot of the times.
To set the stage: This was fresh off his release of Year Zero earlier this year, a fantastic concept album about dystopian 2022, eerily precient of what America has become. It (and its music videos) should be mandatory watching. It had a great ARG priming its release, and Reznor was pissed at Interscope, and was priming to go independent again. Less than a month after this interview, he was encouraging Aussies at his tours to pirate his albums because he was sick of how badly Interscope was ripping them off.
The NIN album he was working on in this interview was Ghosts I, where he did end up following through and releasing it as a completely free digital download in 2008. This album was a taste of what Reznor is mostly likely known for by most of you (relatively) young ones who were but babies circa 2000: His soundtrack work with Atticus Ross.
Anyway here's the money quote. Do read the full interview though, especially if you came of age after 2014.
The rise of Spotify and alternatives really helped in this vein, but many still suffer many of these same problems of trying to 'nudge' you.
The successors to Oink pale in comparison, yet still provide some of the best music discovery tools on the planet. I've spent more on music since joining one of these than I have on all the years after paying for YTM as a result.
I'm sad I missed out on that. I remember something called grooveshark, and there as all the cd sale site where you would buy a "cd", that the company "stored" for you and provided you with digital downloads in the format of your choice. Grooveshark was really awesome, too. It had like, pretty much everything, super easy, and a very straightforward interface that put your search and your preferences at the front, a place where modern services seem to fail.
But the best musical discovery service I ever encountered was alt.binaries.music. I had a little gig as a dj for a short time, and my success was due in large part to the cool tracks I found there that no-one else had. It was also almost cool to use your computer as source in those days, but that's beside the point.
Also a sad note for Pandora. When it first came out, it was really good at playing songs that I hadn't heard before and that I really liked. Even on the paid tiers, today, I rarely hear songs that I haven't heard before, and that I would have heard already even back when Pandora was better. And when I do hear new songs, it's not music I really like (this may be and unfortunate side effect of "maturity.")
I remember grooveshark before it was a store and I think it was just uploaded music from users. It was great.
At this point in time the main successors could be argued to have surpassed OiNK. Maybe not in terms of the community, but in terms of the vast reach of the library that they had/have.
Having said that I did miss out on OiNK entirely, so I can only judge by what I saw that came afterwards, but feel a similar loss for What.CD. rip rippy
What.cd surpassed in total content, because it caught a lot of refugees from OiNK and also because it lasted almost 7 years longer. It was the direct successor, founding the day after OiNK's shuttering.
And it's exclusivity brought safety, but also lack of cultural spread.
True and then the same again for What.cd successors, which I believe the biggest of is closing in on the age that What reached.
Though as others have said for the most people, music is a solved problem with the likes of Spotify, Amazon Music and Youtube Music covering that space with their own vast library's of easy to access music.
I'm confused why you think most people here are in their early-to-mid 20s.
Do we know the demographics of Tildes? I would expect it to lean 30+, but really I have no idea.
A good question (for @mantrid too)!
From the 2020 Tildes Census, though hopefully our demographics changed a bit.... we need an updated one methinks.
The largest decile was 21-30. Which means I have at least 6 years on the largest cohort, and the combined "under 30" crowd was 2/3 of the site. If we assume that the demographics have held, there's a decent 1/3 or more that would have been babies when I graduated highschool.
Maybe us active posters skew older. But I also wasn't assuming, I was throwing a pointer to those who are.
There are undoubtably people on this site, reading this comment, who were born after that interview was done. Some of them might not have even seen The Interview. So I think it's important to highlight for them an important piece of music history, even if they're not the majoirity.
I think the largest decile in 2020 being 21-30 would make it more likely that in 2024, most users are in their late 20s/early 30s (assuming the same population, ofc, which we can't really).
But I also think a lot of the other relatively older folks here are overestimating how young you have to be to have come of age past this era. I just turned 28 last week, and I turned 4 in 2000. Spotify (and its competitors like Apple Music) took over. Someone born the same year OiNK launched would be in their early 20s. The population of people who wouldn't have been old enough to know about that interview with Tren Reznor is older than a lot of millennials and Gen X think it is.