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Oink's Pink Palace

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Re: Oink's Pink Palace

#71

Post by whywhywhywhy »

vanderZwan wrote: post #50
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #49

sad to think the closure of OiNK and What will definitely have set the wheels in motion for some cultural artifacts to become lost. Preservation should be legalized and its absurd to claim it harms sales when Universal Music has $2B revenue

What is easy to overlook is that it's not just cultural artifacts in the sense of the recording itself. These kind of sites also had fans meticulously fill in all the metadata about the history and context of a song, film or whatever. I remember a blog post by a historian lamenting the loss of all that community-build knowledge when these sites where shut down (and I bet it wasn't just one historian who felt that way…

>These kind of sites also had fans meticulously fill in all the metadata about the history and context of a song, film or whatever.

Absolutely, the metadata on What was beyond wikipedia level all completely user managed meticulously. Slightly different versions of releases all catalogued and rips verified to a high standard. This is before we even get into the fact it was all connected so similar artists were navigate-able you could actually start from a band you enjoy and dig into other similar music right from the same site.

The cataloging goes way beyond anything Apple offered at the time and anything Apple, Spotify, Tidal offer today.

Re: Oink's Pink Palace

#73

Post by crtasm »

homefree wrote: post #60
blisstonia wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatCD was pretty damn good, I'd say it rivalled Oink. Remember the bounty on that MSFT forensic tool? The copy of the unreleased JD Salinger novel? Both fulfilled...

I remember coffee getting fulfilled, but don’t recall the Salinger novel getting fulfilled. What was the story there? Iirc it was in the Princeton rare books library and it was hard to get access to? Guessing someone took photos?

They're thinking of the short stories, I guess?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What.CD#Leaks

https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-the-leaked-jd-salinger-st...

Re: Oink's Pink Palace

#74

Post by crtasm »

vanderZwan wrote: post #50
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #49

sad to think the closure of OiNK and What will definitely have set the wheels in motion for some cultural artifacts to become lost. Preservation should be legalized and its absurd to claim it harms sales when Universal Music has $2B revenue

What is easy to overlook is that it's not just cultural artifacts in the sense of the recording itself. These kind of sites also had fans meticulously fill in all the metadata about the history and context of a song, film or whatever. I remember a blog post by a historian lamenting the loss of all that community-build knowledge when these sites where shut down (and I bet it wasn't just one historian who felt that way…

Much of What.CD's metadata was later released:

https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release

Re: Oink's Pink Palace

#75

Post by mustacheemperor »

easyThrowaway wrote: post #57
Spidler wrote: post #11

I'm still salty about the loss of OiNK and the cruft of junk that is streaming services. Finding new artists is near impossible with the profit focus of streaming services today. Spotify insists that you listen to product placement paid top one this week, no matter if you've just had a two hour session of death metal, it insists that you want to hear whatever top-star released last week. Apple is similar, but on thei…

Apple Music is hilarious for this. No matter which is your starting track, if left to their own devices the "For You" and "Music Station" features will start veering into Top-40 pop music just after a few songs. They should be renamed "Six-degrees of separation from Bad Bunny generator".

I haven't experienced the top-40 veer, but it seems like any jazz song from absolutely any subgenre will eventually lead to Freddie Freeloader off Kind of Blue, and then the algorithm just continues to generate from that direction. It's become a running joke between my partner and I. "Just threw on a Cal Tjader album - how many radio tracks do you think we'll get before it's a Miles Davis station instead?" I recall back when I used Spotify, that service's radio similarly insisted that any playlist incorporating even a single indie rap song MUST become a radio featuring JPEGMafia.

It really highlights the limitations of these automated discovery services. I would love a service that makes it easier to explore the vast amounts of recorded music in jazz's various subgenres, and current streaming services are not it. The human curated playlists on Apple Music are pretty good for exploring a genre, at least, but relatively surface level. You are unlikely to discover the deep cuts I'd expect to surface two hours into a generative radio off an album that was itself kind of obscure.

Gosh, I miss what.cd. The industry destroyed it and never replaced it with anything close to it. I have to imagine so many of those cassette rips, like lost Dilla tapes handed out at shows in the 90s, are just gone forever now.

Re: Oink's Pink Palace

#76

Post by theandrewbailey »

nehal3m wrote: post #29

I miss curating local files and playing them with Winamp (just noticed the red squiggly under that name, god I'm old). The mobile-first streaming interfaces with miles of whitespace and big touch targets annoy the heck out of me. When I'm actively listening to music I want the interface to serve that purpose; just give me a list of albums, artists and song titles and let me filter them. Easily managing a playlist is…

I've never stopped using Winamp.

Re: Oink's Pink Palace

#77

Post by mos_basik »

timemct wrote: post #69
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things that got me interested in Benn Jordan and his music was the fact that he was uploading his own albums onto What.CD

If you are the same Solar Fields I’m thinking about, I’m pretty sure I discovered your/their music, specifically the album Until We Meet The Sky, via what.cd. Cheers!

Man! I would have missed that username if you hadn't commented about it. Thanks for saying something!

I will always associate Until We Meet the Sky with a roughly two week period late in my undergrad during which several of my friends were moving away and I was pulling all-nighters helping people pack, blasting this album on the dorm's speakers to a deserted campus and generally thinking about impermanence. Strong album.

Didn't find them via What, though - I think it was by branching out from the Mirror's Edge soundtrack.

How did you find it? Staff Pick or similar?

Re: Oink's Pink Palace

#78

Post by timemct »

mos_basik wrote: post #77
timemct wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are the same Solar Fields I’m thinking about, I’m pretty sure I discovered your/their music, specifically the album Until We Meet The Sky, via what.cd. Cheers!

Man! I would have missed that username if you hadn't commented about it. Thanks for saying something! I will always associate Until We Meet the Sky with a roughly two week period late in my undergrad during which several of my friends were moving away and I was pulling all-nighters helping people pack, blasting this album on the dorm's speakers to a deserted campus and generally thinking about impermanence. Strong al…

My memory of that specific detail is a bit fuzzy, however I’m pretty sure it was a staff pick. That or via the fantastic similar artists feature at the bottom of an artist’s page, the star/spoke map that was user generated/voted: thicker the line between artists, the more user votes that similarity had gotten.

Re: Oink's Pink Palace

#79

Post by Larrikin »

vsnf wrote: post #61
pivic wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I loved them both buy don't forget SoulSeek!

SoulSeek isn’t really discovery though is it? You more or less have to know what you want before you start

SoulSeek allowed you to browse the entire directory being shared, so you only had to search for one thing you wanted and then could look through everything an individual was sharing.

Re: Oink's Pink Palace

#80

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

timemct wrote: post #69
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things that got me interested in Benn Jordan and his music was the fact that he was uploading his own albums onto What.CD

If you are the same Solar Fields I’m thinking about, I’m pretty sure I discovered your/their music, specifically the album Until We Meet The Sky, via what.cd. Cheers!

I am not Magnus, only a fan of his music. Sorry to disappoint :)

I actually discovered Magnus via Pandora ages ago, but WCD allowed me to really discover the full discography and subsequently Ultimae records which puts out a lot of great music in that genre

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