Merzbow Posted August 12 Share Posted August 12 Sure, the format lived before this but the 10th of August 1996 was the first documented scene release with it's own .nfo file. (So i'm a bit late..) I know we have music threads up the arse but let's reminisce over the initial days of us pirating music from the interweb. I started with the classic Napster in 1999 before Metallica went and helped get it shut down. I'm pretty sure the first song I ever downloaded from there was Napalm Death's Twist The Knife (Slowly) from the Mortal Kombat movie soundtrack and then the entire of the self-titled Slipknot album, it was peak mini-mosher era for me. MP3.com was also a fav of mine, possibly even used that earlier but those were legit sample songs uploaded by bands themselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members SuperBacon Posted August 12 Members Share Posted August 12 The absolute classic that was Rage_Against_The_Machine_DegenerationXTheme.mp3 still makes me smile. There was a very shortlived one called Audio Galaxy that was by far my favourite download service. For late 90s/early 00s hip hop it was fantastic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members gmoney Posted August 12 Paid Members Share Posted August 12 6 minutes ago, SuperBacon said: There was a very shortlived one called Audio Galaxy that was by far my favourite download service. For late 90s/early 00s hip hop it was fantastic. Yes, I was slightly too late for Napster, but Audiogalaxy was there for me. It was easy to use, and had good recommendations built into the system. It basically improved my knowledge of music about 50000% in about 6 months. I started out downloading Snoop Dogg and Eminem songs and by the end was onto Jeru the Damaja and Aesop Rock. It was shut down not that long after a year of me using it I reckon, and then I moved on to Soulseek. That was really great for the amount of stuff you could get, but part of me still yearns for Audiogalaxy. I probably stopped downloading music about 15 years ago, after feeling increasingly guilty about it. It's one thing to download a load of major label stuff, or even out of print obscure stuff, but when your bootlegging some small time group who absolutely will miss your £12, it's not really defensible, if it ever even was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Browser Brady Posted August 12 Share Posted August 12 First track converted to MP3 was…….. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members gmoney Posted August 12 Paid Members Share Posted August 12 I don't remember the first song I downloaded, but I do remember the first album I chose to get when we first got broadband, it was er... Turn the Radio Off by Reel Big Fish. I should have been jailed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Browser Brady Posted August 12 Share Posted August 12 God i love me a bit of ‘Net Nostalgia… We got our PC in Feb 2000 when i was 17, Napster was such a game changer. It was like discovering a treasure trove . i couldn’t believe how easy and even quick it seemed to use, even over 56k. I used Audio Galaxy then after that and then Kazaa. I do remember having my playlists in Winamp and how great that was. I’d love a Winamp Skin for Spotify.. Do you remember how you’ed have to download real player for .ra files, Quicktime for .mov files and all that ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merzbow Posted August 12 Author Share Posted August 12 (edited) 95% sure I would have downloaded songs from that Reel Big Fish album myself, I blame some dickhead mate who was constantly trying to push ska punk and bands like MxPx on me. EDIT: fucking RealPlayer... the amount of wrestling theme songs I'd download in shit .ra quality. Edited August 12 by Merzbow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Healys Chutney Spoon Posted August 12 Share Posted August 12 Limewire was my go to download site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators neil Posted August 12 Moderators Share Posted August 12 18 minutes ago, Browser Brady said: First track converted to MP3 was…….. You're not exactly wrong...but it was more that it was used to develop the MP3 algorithm as it was easy to hear when the lossy compression algorithm impacted the results. I spent over a year doing research into lossy compression algorithms ? so excuse the pedantry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Bus Surfer Posted August 12 Paid Members Share Posted August 12 First song I downloaded on Napster was ICP's Chicken Huntin. 56k dial up connection and I already had it on a CD. What a knob. Those early days were unimaginable at the time. Something well never see again. I think KaZza was responsible for one of those automatic dialers getting installed on my PC and racking up a £300 phone bill that my Dad (rightly) went up the wall about. What a time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheScarlettChad Posted August 12 Share Posted August 12 Bill Clinton sure loved advertising on Limewire when you wanted to do download music. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awards Moderator Frankie Crisp Posted August 12 Awards Moderator Share Posted August 12 The MP3 paid for my social life in the early 2000s. Riddled with Uni debt and on a shit wage for my first proper jobs, I needed a second income to allow me to go for a pint. It started with selling knock-off shirts from a bin bag in the boozer but that was a pain in the arse. My old man bought me a PC - probably assuming I’d be into gaming and all that - but I absolutely hammered the downloads once I got a job in a call centre and knew I had a new market. Along with cdcovers.cc and Nero, Napster almost doubled my monthly income. David Gray, Craig David and Limp Bizkit’s legal sales in Warrington were no doubt unusually low thanks to my sideline which was ignored by company directors, mainly because their kids absolutely lapped it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TibBo Posted August 12 Share Posted August 12 Not quite the same, but I made a killing selling terrible copies of Scream 3 that I somehow got an early release of in secondary school. Those blokes selling copied PS1 games must have made a ton once everyone got their PlayStations chipped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Scratch Posted August 13 Paid Members Share Posted August 13 (edited) Whenever I see MP3 written I always think of this which seemed so futuristic in the 90s. Edited August 13 by Scratch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Gaffer Posted August 13 Share Posted August 13 I'd totally forgotten about Winamp! For sure it's design always had me siding with it as the 'proper' music player. We were Limewire kids, so used to haunt internet cafes in groups back then. Six of us paying for half that amount of computers to rip mostly Gatecrasher/Clubland era trance. I still devoted my pocket money to 'real' music on CD. There was a design-by-committee disc we each ripped a copy of that functioned as our sort of Abba Gold, that we used to put on in the car of whatever older sibling we convinced to drive us to to whatever spot we were getting pissed up in that night. Odious thing, it was, but I have so much gooey alcopop nostalgia tied up in it that I can almost remember the exact tracklisting: 1. Element 4 (Big Brother UK TV theme tune) 2. Tiesto - Lethal Industry 3. Barthezz - On The Move 4. Scooter - Weekend 5. Planet Perfecto - Bullet in the Gun 6. PPK - Resurrection 7. Agnelli & Nelson - Holding On To Nothing 8. Ian Van Dahl - Castles in the Sky 9. N-Trance - Set You Free 10. Gigi D'Agostino - L'Amour Toujours If we made it to Gigi without someone having a spat with their sweetheart of two hours then it was usually considered a successful night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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