The French government decimated What. It had nothing but growth even long after Spotify. It was a music fan's heaven; it had virtually every version of every record ever released. You can't put a price on that. Also, as a musician of nearly 20 years, I would 100% absolutely rather have a person pirate my music than pay $10/mo to play it on Spotify.

Waffles didn't innovate. The site that launched after Oink shutdown is largely the same site that is up today (figuratively, I'm sure it'll be back at some point).

I would absolutely rather pay $100/month for a legal version of What.cd than use Spotify :/

The worst part isn't that What is gone, it's that What is gone and nothing can replace it. Like with older games that can't be purchased legally online, the rightsholders have kept us from consuming that content at all. In order to preserve their absolute right to distribute it for money!

The number of people here suggesting Apple Music would have killed it anyway or that Tidal etc is an adequate replacement shows just how effectively the rightsholders have deluded us all again. The currently available streaming services are almost entirely incomparable to the collection once available at What, it's like comparing your local library to the statewide database.

I think ultimately it would have suffered from Spotify and Apple Music. Both them have grown an enormous amount since What went away.

That said, I agree it was a music fan's heaven. Just as Oink was before it. It is sad how badly Apple Music's recommendation system is, how bloated it is with recording industry pushed crap.

Really? HBO got a lot of pushback in Norway this year for the crappy video quality they deliver. A lot of people opted to download the torrent releases based on Amazon has much better quality, even though they had a HBO subscription

I was somewhat surprised also. I think many people can't distinguish video compression and how much impact it has. I've seen people watch live sports on incredible home entertainment systems paying high fees for HD TV and it is just blurry pixels.

what.cd still had some of the best organization of any site, ever. It's hilarious that a company as big as Amazon has such a horrendous UI for browsing music, but lil what.cd had such a comprehensive and slick design

the thing too is ACTUALLY being able to see what is new and active and going on overall.

the recommendations were pretty well thought out even if not my cup of tea, and you could actually see what was new or active without having to worry about the piper being paid.

if you wanted to listen to your weirdly specific music tastes, it was perfect for that.

Coincidentally, I've been thinking a bit about what it would take to create censorship-resistant websites. I concluded that you need trusted people to host the site, a database cluster and a bunch of workers to connect to the DB (with local caches). Then you could use Tor and publish a list of worker addresses/hidden sites for people to use.

Taking this setup down would require someone to take every single person/node down, although it might have more issues with availability.

>Streaming audio services decimated private trackers like What and Waffles

Citation needed.

Private trackers are and were always for data hoarders and bitrate freaks. The average Spotify subscriber was never the target audience of private trackers.

Data hoarders are certainly a segment but as a long time what.cd member I completely stopped downloading music once I had a spotify subscription. For me, torrenting was an inconvenient means to an ends (low cost unlimited access to music)

Yep! Was a semi-dedicated what user (hosted a certain rather large language learning collection on a seedbox for the ratio, used daily). Spotify/others handle the 90% case for me, though I do miss the curation. Also the security that comes with "no matter what happens, at least I've got the files I care about on hard drives I control"

I too dealt with a lot of audio torrents prior to streaming services.

Another big change for me was the industry got wise to leaks. Now when an album leaks, the labels have a plan to immediately offer it for streaming on a major service or even media partner like NPR.

One of the major values of private Audio trackers was you got to hear stuff way before other people. Even this has been largely taken away. (Though sometimes the previews are now only a few songs)

honestly so crazy. I, like many others, dedicated so much time to what and was truly heart broken when it disappeared. Spent countless hours, days, weeks interviewing people. Countless hours, days, weeks rippings and uploading to reach TM. Made some good friends and some I'll never cross paths with again. A true shame. Sadly what came next, although good, will never be the same and I do think it's because of how easy it is so stream music.

EDIT: the loss of the forums, knowledge, metadata is truly heartbreaking... i really can't think about it too much

Yep that’s me. I use private trackers to watch cable shows without commercials but still pay for an HBO Now subscription for GoT because it was just easier and $15/month for two months is really not a big deal.

Bet they were disappointed (in the show, not the service)