This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. One of the more infamous private music sharing sites, What.cd, has been shut down: What.cd, an invite-only music torrent website first launched in 2007, has been shut down after a raid by French authorities. The private tracker offered free (and often illegal) access to a massive, deeply thorough collection of music and was popular among audiophiles for its strict rules around quality and file formats. The site was created after the shutdown of another well-known torrent website, Oink, which operated between 2004 and 2007. Expand - View Original
Not sure how many people here were active users beyond just downloading, but What consisted of the greatest, most knowledgeable audiophile community I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of. This will be missed.
This is horrible. I'm having PTSD from when OiNK shut down. First Waffles disappears and now this? Woof...
Pretty similar to my first reaction. Sitting at a ref light yelling "Noooooooo" at my phone. Hopefully it will come back up as you mentioned. I've got a Music subscription too, but no subscription will ever have nearly the catalog that what.cd had. They had every obscure single, every 7", every international edition of every album, etc. and all in a multitude of high quality audio types. I bet there were well over 100 variations of blink-182's TOYPAJ alone. I'm really, really hoping this site pops up somewhere else. Or that the majority of stuff pops up again on another similar site (as was the case with OiNK stuff popping up on what.cd EDIT: I commented before actually visiting the site. Not a promising message. Dammit.
That is... beyond depressing. What was an archive beyond my imagination. I buy vinyl and subscribe to streaming services and go to every damn show I can manage and support the artists I love. What.CD was.. it was beautiful. The community was great, the standards were insane. I feel its warranted to be able to have FLAC versions of the albums I own on vinyl without having to rip them myself. I'm sure that's another discussion with differing opinions. Regardless of that, truly bummed.
Lueda from AP.net graciously gave me an invite to what.cd about 7 years ago and I've loved it ever since. So so sad to see it go.
Easily the best torrent tracker ever to exist. I relied on this so much to get good quality rips. Now what do I do?
haven't used it much since streaming but it was a very important part of me having all high quality well tagged music and plenty of deep cuts, really a bummer
Still can't believe it's gone. We all knew something like this could happen at anytime, but when it does, it really hits you hard. Easily one of the best music communities ever created. Really really going to miss it, discovered so much new music there it's bonkers. Nothing can touch their artist matrix for recommendations! RIP What.