Let's make this a megathread on the subject of music piracy.
For full albums, one great way to find them is through blogs. Google "Artist name" "Album title" blogspot. Usually the files will be hosted on Megaupload, Mediafire, Hotfile, or Rapidshare. If you specifically want to bring up links with one of those in particular, add it to the google search. Megaupload has always been the quickest and least problematic for me, but people always have differing opinions on this.
One blog I check regularly and am also a poster on is
holyfuckingshit. Lots of quality stuff there, a lot of which in lossless FLAC. Which brings me to file formats:
The one you will see most often is MP3. The lower the bitrate, the lower the quality. Don't download anything at 128 bitrate or lower unless it's absolutely necessary. The sound quality there is noticeably bad. Go 192 and above. Variable bit rates are usually good too, with V0 being the highest quality variable bit rate for MP3.
A lot of what I download is in lossless FLAC. This means that no sound quality is lost from the original CD. The downside to this is the large filesize, but I have a terabyte or so harddrive space to spare right now, so it's hardly an issue. Some people claim to not hear a difference from 320, but I notice it very well, and so do others.
For torrents, I usually go to
rutracker. Sure, it's in Russian, but it's really a goldmine of lossless albums. Just use google translate at first, then you start to memorize where everything is at so you don't need it anymore. If you've never torrented before download utorrent and start off on thepiratebay.
And now I will shamelessly advertise my music blog, if anybody at all is interested.
http://chainsawfellatio2.blogspot.com/
Another good site to look for albums is warez-bb, even though I feel I've grown well beyond the need to go there anymore.
http://www.warez-bb.org/
If you can get an invite, get a what.cd account. They're a private torrent site. You'll find a lot of stuff there in a quality you won't find elsewhere, though the difference isn't too significant over Rutorrent. If you can't get an invite google around to find the irc channel and they'll quiz you on file formats and such. I used to have an account there but got banned when I shared it with an idiot on Zoklet who let an 8th grader use it and rape the ratio by downloading shit like Green Day in FLAC. Moral of the story, don't share account with retards.
Comments
to Pirate Bay
to BTJunkie
I'm getting better raiguiyz?
this blog has an ungodly amount of bootlegs, click on the labels on the right for specific artists
Soulseek for underground
Oh wow, i havnt used a fse in a while so i looked to see what the newer file search engines were like and i stumbled across a small gem
http://globalfilesearch.com/ a ftp search engine
Now im trying to work out why have i never even thought to look for such a thing till now.
EDIT, i realise a ftp search engine might not be the best thing for looking for music but wow 'why didnt i think about that' sort of thing going on for me.
What.cd is where it's at. I love the way everything is so neatly organized, and how it's easy to find similar artists. I worked so hard at becoming a power user there so I could invite people. It's really difficult, I eventually just gave up and only download stuff I can't find elsewhere there now. I do have some waffles.fm invites however that I could share with members who can keep a good ratio.
Its bound to be on either of those 3.
Torrents are shitty and lack proper anonymity to them. I had my ISP get butthurt over torrenting a while back for torrenting San Andreas FFS.
As for me I just download torrents with uTorrent.. usually use torrentz.com or demonoid.
I used Limewire as well for when I wanted to download single songs, until I found the Freecorder toolbar. I use it now to record whatever song/video I want on YouTube.
A. I type the name in on google and go to beemp3.com or some shit
B. I find a quality youtube video and use an online flv-mp3 converter.
Ugh youtube sound quality is horrible.
Toss me a waffle.fm invite. Shouldn't be a problem for me, I'm bound to have something they don't have I can upload.
Haha, enjoy your malware/letters from the RIAA. Seriously, stay away from Limewire.
Limewire
Pirate Bay
Demonoid
Limewire
Pirate Bay
Demonoid
Warezbb
NICE blog man, really dig a lot of the music posted there. Make me a poster, I have much lossless music that I can share.
I miss them already
soulseek-NS for individual or rare songs.
Demonoid is pretty good for torrenting - I much prefer it to TPB, that's for sure. I haven't actually downloaded anything in quite a while though.
New films, albums, games or software are usually what get people in trouble.
A few weeks after it came out, I downloaded Gran Torino, and within three weeks of that, I received a letter from some lawyer or firm (I forget the specifics. I never saved the letter.) listing things like the file I downloaded, where it was downloaded from, etc, and demanding that I cut that shit out and delete the film off my computer.
Stick with old shit that nobody cares about.
Demonoid is the best torrent site I've used so far. I no longer use any of the others since I got my invite.
But I actually just torrent stuff, not really into music but if I need to find something, I basically search on torrents and then hit on sharing websites.