OiNK under investigation as arrests are made.

[Cormier6083]

Kind of like supporting Britney Spears to do crack cocaine?

I only "download" major artists with millions of dollars in their wallets... thats if I EVER download.

"Good artists copy, great artists steal."

(It's irrelevant, I know but it sounds sooo cool)

\/ LOLOLOLOL

[ThePitt]

Edited October 24, 2007 by ThePitt

[Toology]

I would conjecture that CD sales only really help less-mainstream artists. Something like 10% of a CD sale actually goes to the artist on big labels. The rest goes primarily to the label and anyone involved in production who needs to get paid. Downloading music (legal or otherwise) can get you into an artist to the point where you would want to pay to see them live. What's the price of a CD compared to a concert ticket? Concert tours are where the real $$$ are at. Sure, you can download a bootleg of a live set but you can't download a true, live, in-person experience.

Further Reading:

Downhill Battle - Music Activism

[shooter468]

sad thing to hear

OinK was one of the best

anyone got TorrentLeech invites?

or know of any other site as good as oink?

[troist]

sad thing to hear

OinK was one of the best

anyone got TorrentLeech invites?

or know of any other site as good as oink?

TL closed their invites today, leaving no reason. Its pretty obvious they're scared like hell seeing OiNK since TL are very focused on "pay for leech" and the TL admins would get completely screwed in court if it came to that.

There are other sites for music... none as good as OiNK though :(

[Venomous]

I only download major labels from people that have too much already for instance look at Curtis latest Cd 50Cent has enough money.

[alsheron]

not of the quality of OiNK they won't. it was invite only for a reason and it was pretty damn strict on transcodes and bad posts. I doubt there are any sites out there that could step up to take it's place.

Absolutely agreed. It was an incredible quality site and community, considering its "illegality" and it's a real shame it's been shut down.

I know one thing for sure: If the record industry BPI/RIAA etc can't match the quality of releases and community/interface of sites like OiNK and the much missed AllofMp3.com then they will quite literally play this game of cat and mouse forever because people will never accept their s**t CONtracts in their current overpriced subscription model form.

Until the day comes where consumers get REAL quality and VALUE for their "purchases" of digital content (and i don't mean free either - don't be silly) these organisations will never ever succeed in shutting down the "scene", although it seems they thoroughly enjoy the process of trying.

It seems to me though, that at the moment they're on a vampires rampage of blood lust. They seem solely out to scare and intimidate rather than actually solve the problem constructively and intelligently - why? - I'll tell you why: Because like all bullies, they feel inadequate (and with good reason) compared to sites like AllofMp3 and OiNK because they KNOW that people would still use those sites even if they had to pay (or pay more - fairly) to do so. One thing that's PAINFULLY obvious is that the quality of music released today is woeful compared to some music from past decades. Their flimsy money making schemes aren't working anymore and they themselves have made music into some throwaway commodity - why then would people be inclined (not want) to pay for it as a digital download when they aren't getting that cheap disc of plastic they were getting overcharged for in the first place? The fact they still sell CD's at ALL sometimes amazes me and only indicates the gullibility of those who really believe their scare tactics or know no better.

These record company associations are bullies plain and simple, throwing their legitimate weight around and suing old ladies $200,000 PER TRACK. Intelligent? - no frigging way. Beneficial in ANY way long term? Absolutely, categorically, undoubtedly NOT.

Oh, and all this BULL about artists getting paid enough $$$, i'd suggest people stop being so resentful of others' wealth and get of their backsides and make some of their own.

[ZombieFly]

Absolutely agreed. It was an incredible quality site and community, considering its "illegality" and it's a real shame it's been shut down.

I know one thing for sure: If the record industry BPI/RIAA etc can't match the quality of releases and community/interface of sites like OiNK and the much missed AllofMp3.com then they will quite literally play this game of cat and mouse forever because people will never accept their s**t CONtracts in their current overpriced subscription model form.

Until the day comes where consumers get REAL quality and VALUE for their "purchases" of digital content (and i don't mean free either - don't be silly) these organisations will never ever succeed in shutting down the "scene", although it seems they thoroughly enjoy the process of trying.

It seems to me though, that at the moment they're on a vampires rampage of blood lust. They seem solely out to scare and intimidate rather than actually solve the problem constructively and intelligently - why? - I'll tell you why: Because like all bullies, they feel inadequate (and with good reason) compared to sites like AllofMp3 and OiNK because they KNOW that people would still use those sites even if they had to pay (or pay more - fairly) to do so. One thing that's PAINFULLY obvious is that the quality of music released today is woeful compared to some music from past decades. Their flimsy money making schemes aren't working anymore and they themselves have made music into some throwaway commodity - why then would people be inclined (not want) to pay for it as a digital download when they aren't getting that cheap disc of plastic they were getting overcharged for in the first place? The fact they still sell CD's at ALL sometimes amazes me and only indicates the gullibility of those who really believe their scare tactics or know no better.

These record company associations are bullies plain and simple, throwing their legitimate weight around and suing old ladies $200,000 PER TRACK. Intelligent? - no frigging way. Beneficial in ANY way long term? Absolutely, categorically, undoubtedly NOT.

:yes:

something has gone wrong recently with the public perception of music. When i was a lad [lol, i'm now 34] we had these things called cassette tapes. These archaic devices were loops of plastic film wound onto 2 wheels in a plastic case which you then inserted into a thing called a tape deck. This deck had some basic controls for moving the wheels forwards or backwards at one of two preset speeds. Anyway, these things had poor quality sound, were prone to damage and stretching and were basically rubbish. Then along came the cd, a magical device from the future which employed a fekkin LASER to magically read music from a silver disc, man, it could even work with JAM smeared all over it [according to tomorrows world, a tv show at the time!]. Anyway, these cd things had superior sound quality over cassettes and some would even argue over Vinyl. CD quality was the new standard, boasting with such slogans as "it's as good as having the band in your front room" etc. So, when the cd came, it was an expensive little gizmo, but the difference in quality over previous formats was massive, so you felt like you were paying for something special.

FFWD to today. Apparently low bitrate garbage is all that's required. Kids walk along the street now playing music from a mobile phone speaker! - listen, it sounds like wasps in a tin box. Alternatively the masses have adopted the iPod as the device of choice, fed by iTunes and it's crappy bitrates and unconvincingly pumped into the iClone's ears via low quality ear buds. What happened? Why are we advancing backwards as quickly as we moved forwards? why in this media rich day and age are the masses accepting this garbage?

It seems due to saturation via the internet etc that music is no longer the special thing it once was to people of my generation [and generations before] and it's now some disposable crap that people listen to on low quality equipment and expect to get for free. Look at the Radiohead "revolution". 160kbps?!!?! get real. i didn't pay good money for a decent system to listen to quality lower than a cassette tape.

People need to stop buying from the likes of iTunes and start using the likes of OiNK. Yes, it's illegal, but until the public do something to make a stand nothing will change. For decades the public have been paying way over the odds for cd's, now it seems we are expected to pay for lower quality than cd, but still people buy buy buy.

So, to the industry i say:

Put lossless online to buy at a reasonable cost [i.e. minus the "manufacturing" costs and give money back to the artist] Put back cat titles online instead of re-mastering the old cd release and selling for FULL CD PRICE! [see depeche mode recent remasters]. Move with the times instead of against them. You had a good run over the last however many decades, you've extracted cash from everyone and given nothing to the artists. Give it up, you look stupid now.

to the artists i say:

Push your own music yourselves via the internet. There will always be a user base who will pay you for what you do, there will always be a lot of people that don't pay, it all balances out. Leeches are not a new thing, they were previously recording tracks from the top40 onto cassette tapes on a sunday evening, they never bought music then and they won't now, nothing has changed

Edited October 24, 2007 by ZombieFly

[alsheron]

:yes:

something has gone wrong recently with the public perception of music. When i was a lad [lol, i'm now 34] we had these things called cassette tapes. These archaic devices were loops of plastic film wound onto 2 wheels in a plastic case which you then inserted into a thing called a tape deck. This deck had some basic controls for moving the wheels forwards or backwards at one of two preset speeds. Anyway, these things had poor quality sound, were prone to damage and stretching and were basically rubbish. Then along came the cd, a magical device from the future which employed a fekkin LASER to magically read music from a silver disc, man, it could even work with JAM smeared all over it [according to tomorrows world, a tv show at the time!]. Anyway, these cd things had superior sound quality over cassettes and some would even argue over Vinyl. CD quality was the new standard, boasting with such slogans as "it's as good as having the band in your front room" etc. So, when the cd came, it was an expensive little gizmo, but the difference in quality over previous formats was massive, so you felt like you were paying for something special.

FFWD to today. Apparently low bitrate garbage is all that's required. Kids walk along the street now playing music from a mobile phone speaker! - listen, it sounds like wasps in a tin box. Alternatively the masses have adopted the iPod as the device of choice, fed by iTunes and it's crappy bitrates and unconvincingly pumped into the iClone's ears via low quality ear buds. What happened? Why are we advancing backwards as quickly as we moved forwards? why in this media rich day and age are the masses accepting this garbage?

It seems due to saturation via the internet etc that music is no longer the special thing it once was to people of my generation [and generations before] and it's now some disposable crap that people listen to on low quality equipment and expect to get for free. Look at the Radiohead "revolution". 160kbps?!!?! get real. i didn't pay good money for a decent system to listen to quality lower than a cassette tape.

People need to stop buying from the likes of iTunes and start using the likes of OiNK. Yes, it's illegal, but until the public do something to make a stand nothing will change. For decades the public have been paying way over the odds for cd's, now it seems we are expected to pay for lower quality than cd, but still people buy buy buy.

So, to the industry i say:

Put lossless online to buy at a reasonable cost [i.e. minus the "manufacturing" costs and give money back to the artist] Put back cat titles online instead of re-mastering the old cd release and selling for FULL CD PRICE! [see depeche mode recent remasters]. Move with the times instead of against them. You had a good run over the last however many decades, you've extracted cash from everyone and given nothing to the artists. Give it up, you look stupid now.

to the artists i say:

Push your own music yourselves via the internet. There will always be a user base who will pay you for what you do, there will always be a lot of people that don't pay, it all balances out. Leeches are not a new thing, they were previously recording tracks from the top40 onto cassette tapes on a sunday evening, they never bought music then and they won't now, nothing has changed

And this, my friends, should be a manifesto for change. Print it out, laminate it and shove it up the fat, overfed ass of the BPI and RIAA. :)

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

:yes:

something has gone wrong recently with the public perception of music. When i was a lad [lol, i'm now 34] we had these things called cassette tapes. These archaic devices were loops of plastic film wound onto 2 wheels in a plastic case which you then inserted into a thing called a tape deck. This deck had some basic controls for moving the wheels forwards or backwards at one of two preset speeds. Anyway, these things had poor quality sound, were prone to damage and stretching and were basically rubbish. Then along came the cd, a magical device from the future which employed a fekkin LASER to magically read music from a silver disc, man, it could even work with JAM smeared all over it [according to tomorrows world, a tv show at the time!]. Anyway, these cd things had superior sound quality over cassettes and some would even argue over Vinyl. CD quality was the new standard, boasting with such slogans as "it's as good as having the band in your front room" etc. So, when the cd came, it was an expensive little gizmo, but the difference in quality over previous formats was massive, so you felt like you were paying for something special.

FFWD to today. Apparently low bitrate garbage is all that's required. Kids walk along the street now playing music from a mobile phone speaker! - listen, it sounds like wasps in a tin box. Alternatively the masses have adopted the iPod as the device of choice, fed by iTunes and it's crappy bitrates and unconvincingly pumped into the iClone's ears via low quality ear buds. What happened? Why are we advancing backwards as quickly as we moved forwards? why in this media rich day and age are the masses accepting this garbage?

It seems due to saturation via the internet etc that music is no longer the special thing it once was to people of my generation [and generations before] and it's now some disposable crap that people listen to on low quality equipment and expect to get for free. Look at the Radiohead "revolution". 160kbps?!!?! get real. i didn't pay good money for a decent system to listen to quality lower than a cassette tape.

People need to stop buying from the likes of iTunes and start using the likes of OiNK. Yes, it's illegal, but until the public do something to make a stand nothing will change. For decades the public have been paying way over the odds for cd's, now it seems we are expected to pay for lower quality than cd, but still people buy buy buy.

So, to the industry i say:

Put lossless online to buy at a reasonable cost [i.e. minus the "manufacturing" costs and give money back to the artist] Put back cat titles online instead of re-mastering the old cd release and selling for FULL CD PRICE! [see depeche mode recent remasters]. Move with the times instead of against them. You had a good run over the last however many decades, you've extracted cash from everyone and given nothing to the artists. Give it up, you look stupid now.

to the artists i say:

Push your own music yourselves via the internet. There will always be a user base who will pay you for what you do, there will always be a lot of people that don't pay, it all balances out. Leeches are not a new thing, they were previously recording tracks from the top40 onto cassette tapes on a sunday evening, they never bought music then and they won't now, nothing has changed

:yes:

Very well said!

[lhnz]

I agree with both Alsheron and ZombieFly.

[one321]

I agree with both Alsheron and ZombieFly.

Me too.

You'd think that the industry would start getting the hint after seeing how popular OiNK is/was and how some big name artists are going independent. What you are doing isn't working. You'll never be able to preserve how business worked in the past especially if you keep alienating the people that gave or would have given you money. Coming up with a great solution won't mean much when everyone hates you.

[GFM]

As I sad as I am to see Oink no longer with us, it almost seems as if it was inevitable. Not that I'm being pessismistic, I rather see it as Oink having a good run at providing great, quailty rips. Oink was the one site that turned me on to lossless format allowing me to understand not the importance of it but the underlying quality of lossless audio. I refuse to to rip any cd in anything other than lossless. I'm sure like many others that many went out and bought the cds we downloaded regardless of having recieved it for free via piracy. Piracy will forever exist be it software, music, video games. There is always someone out there looking for a way around it, and sure enough they will find it.

So I say kudos to Oink and the mainstay it made in my life of bittorrent.

[theyarecomingforyou]

What's the price of a CD compared to a concert ticket? Concert tours are where the real $$$ are at. Sure, you can download a bootleg of a live set but you can't download a true, live, in-person experience.

Actually merchandise is where the money is at... concerts often don't make much money and can do the opposite.

@ZombieFly - I agree completely. I have never purchased music from iTunes or any similar services because of the poor quality - I downloaded a few tracks for free off iTunes (artist of the week or whatever it's called) but I ended up losing them because I couldn't keep track of the DRM. We were supposed to be moving on to DVD-Audio with 24bit sound quality, 96k sample rates and support for surround sound - instead we're seeing sub-CD quality music pushed out with DRM, greatly limiting what you can do with the music you've purchased (unlike the older CD format).

We need high-quality music - at a minimum lossless CD-quality - with high quality album art (1000px-1000px), no-DRM and high quality music videos for bonuses before buying online music is to take off. There should still be lower quality versions for people that want them (people with small hard-drives, iPods, etc). There should also be a system like Steam that allows you to redownload the music you own at any point. They should be offering MORE rather than less. I despise what the iTunes Music Store has done to people's expectations of music (low sound quality / album art, etc). I will continue to buy all my music on CD until the music industry can sort it out.

PS - I disagree with the people that use the RIAA as an excuse to never buy music or claim that by downloading the music for free they are sending the music industry a message, as that is just excuse making for getting something for free to which one is not entitled.

[ZombieFly]

good to see so many people share my views, there could be hope after all :)

OiNK won't be replaced, it took a long time to build it's reputation. This reminds me of when Audiogalaxy was closed way back in the day.

I guess now we just have to sit and wait for a few years for the music industry to go up it's own ar$e and implode?

[DomZ]

I loved audiogalaxy, with that plugin/3rd party program that "guessed" and tried to find album songs, you'd' end up with a dir full of mixed bitrates and badly tagged songs, but it was awesome at the time.

OiNK was about as good as a music tracker can get, although I've recently joined 'softmp3' and I like some of the interface ideas they have. OiNK turned me into a v0 loving, bad tag hating freak. And I thank them for that!

[darkz]

why the hell there are such dumbasses saying "Warms my heart to see another common thieving ******* caught. " ****?!

was this called thieving 10years ago?

[ZombieFly]

I loved audiogalaxy, with that plugin/3rd party program that "guessed" and tried to find album songs, you'd' end up with a dir full of mixed bitrates and badly tagged songs, but it was awesome at the time.

OiNK was about as good as a music tracker can get, although I've recently joined 'softmp3' and I like some of the interface ideas they have. OiNK turned me into a v0 loving, bad tag hating freak. And I thank them for that!

haha! yes! it used to take days/weeks to get tracks. It was quite an achievement given that we were all on dial up modems at the time!... wow, how times have changed, nobody even knew what an mp3 was in those days :)

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Too many posts in this thread are encouraging what could now be considered illegal behaviour in the United States.

[Thread Closed]