I am using Spool.fm currently instead of Pandora. I like the syncronize with friend feature a lot. The only downside it the quality of the music files.
Spurnova has been ably replaced by these meta torrent search engines like Snarf-it and Isohunt, and torrent websites like demonoid.
I had never heard of singingfish before.
The only service that will probably be missed is OLGA. Their closure really sucked. I still dont think OLGA was breaking the law.
Kevin
· 2 years ago
ultimate-guitar.com. Until THEY get shut down, anyway. They are based in Russia and probably mob-owned!
Corey
· 2 years ago
Nice post. Reminded me of a few sites that I used to frequent a lot back in the day and forgot all about. Time to go check them out again!
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira
· 2 years ago
If the stupid RIAA had any idea of how many CDs I went out and bought because of stuff I found on Napster. Little-known albums that hardly sell at allk, niche acts... something would pop up on a search and you'd download it and be introduced to something you'd never heard before.
Shoot... I still do that, only it's not as easy or handed to you on MySpace. It was the accidental stumbling on Napster that got me into a whole SLEW of new-to-me acts.
Matt
· 2 years ago
I remember how furious I was that OLGA was shut down. I also remember seeing photos of what I believe were the MP3.com offices being stripped of the pinball machines, massive servers and various other goodies (on their way to being pawned, most likely :P) which were obviously purchased in haste, just before the closure of the site.
seth
· 2 years ago
"At the beginning, everyone thought everything on the Internet is going to be free, forever."
i don't know what tubes you are stuck in, but over here it's getting much much easier to pirate. i'll take www.tv-links.co.uk and btjunkie.org over any other p2p app/website that has come up through the days.
if you think the lawyers are winning, you aren't connected enough.
Shimrit
· 2 years ago
And that has to do with social networks because...? enough with all these lists already, guys. We got the idea...
dave
· 2 years ago
What about AudioGalaxy's initial incarnation?
chance
· 2 years ago
indeed. the best music sharing site out of all...
tim
· 2 years ago
agreed -- audiogalaxy was one of a kind, and the ability to use a browser and send files to people on your buddy list was great. I was able to cue up things from my work computer to home with no effort, and now I have to go about setting up a VPN? Lame.
Audiogalaxy should definitely be #11!
Scott
· 2 years ago
Yes! Audiogalaxy was fantastic and a glaring omission from this list. The best part was that with the satellite running on your computer at home, you could set up a download to your computer from any computer anywhere. No more writing down cool bands to check out and losing the paper before you got home!
alas...
Rex
· 2 years ago
mp3.com shutting down really sucked. It was a good site, and legal. Oh well, shows you the power of the law if they want to kill you, they will.
Rex
James
· 2 years ago
Ahh, the original napster, those were the days. Don't think we've seen a sharing app as good since it shut down all those years ago. Bloody copyright infringement indeed.
:(
matt
· 2 years ago
I think I still have a floppy disc at home with a Napster.exe on it.
Napster was full of crap but it was functional in it's time.
Peter
· 2 years ago
I'm not sure I understand the attitude about Alexa.
If someone took all of Mashable's content -- every single post -- and made it available on mashaholic.com, complete with an M+ logo, what would Pete and the guys at Mashable think? What if the service was even in some ways a little better than Mashable because it had additional features like a decent search and a cleaner UI? What if it became more popular because of those things, and mashable lost traffic to mashaholic.com?
Seems so simple to me... like I said I don't really understand it.
Steve Argot
· 2 years ago
AudioGalaxy ROCKED!!!
That site was way ahead of it's time...
Brad
· 2 years ago
man, i used to spend hours on that site just reading genre and band descriptions. it was like a music history class. i miss it dearly.
Someone
· 2 years ago
Useless Microsoft bashing.
1. Patents don't have much to do with code, they have to do with methods of doing things. E.g. Microsoft has a patent on a network buffer accessible by multiple drivers in a certain processor mode. If anyone else implements such a buffer, then they break the patent, no matter if they provide sourcecode or not. No matter if they wrote their code from scratch or stole it from Microsoft, it's illegal either way.
2. Microsoft shares sourcecode of Windows with MVPs, universities, businesses, governments, in other words, pretty much anyone who would want to see windows sourcecode can.
Robert Patrician
· 2 years ago
I'm a united states soldier deployed to south korea. EVERYONE at my office used to listen to pandora all day at work. I dropped about $100 on albums through itunes that I found through pandora. Can't listen to pandora anymore. Well, back to blatantly pirating music. For every instance of pirating the RIAA stops, they moderately inconvenience a dozen legitimate users, which leads to at least two of them changing over to pirating instead of buying music.
I spent money on itunes through pandora because it was more convenient than pirating music. That's a EXTREMELY HARD thing to accomplish online, to have people willing to pay for something that they can technically get for free. I'm hoping that when I go back to the states, pandora will still be around.
Fuck ya RIAA. I wish the band stardust was around, cuz music DON'T sound better with you!
Hotdog
· 2 years ago
Pandora works fine in the UK doesn't matter because I use Last.fm by choice
Community Building Blog
· 2 years ago
I just took a look, and it works for me too (UK user). Looks interesting!
- Martin Reed
Stace
· 2 years ago
I miss the Dysfunctional Family Circus.
dorko
· 2 years ago
Good old Napster... I miss it
mike
· 2 years ago
Audiogalaxy was amazing - it is how i discovered much of the music i still listen to now.
Jon
· 2 years ago
This was a nice article, but my favorite site to ever be shut down by lawyers was zippotricks.com. It was full of video tutorials of people doing weird dangerous things with fire, and was shut down by Zippo's lawyers with a domain dispute and political pressure. It's gone forever now.
SEO Mash
· 2 years ago
Another great article Stan. You have been a great addition to the Mashable team!
Interesting that all but two of the entries here are related to the music industry. One would think at some point they would stop spending millions on lawyers and instead invest in the development of services which match the very obvious desires of their customers.
tarpo
· 2 years ago
Awesome article.. I wish that uplister.com had become big enough.. and started NOW instead of when it did so the awesomeness of the service could have been killed by the RIAA instead of just from being so far ahead of its time that the technology wasn't ready for such a cool place.
I spent more time making lists on songs there and virtual mixtapes than I did on Napster downloading the damn songs
bundoo
· 2 years ago
its really hard to see them go, some i knew and some i didn't. But nothing can stop, where there is a will, there's a way.
Anonymous coward
· 2 years ago
to: Cyndy Aleo-Carreira, who bought cd's because of napster. the riaa does not care about you. the riaa does not care about their customers. their whole business model is to sue consumers. the people who, like you, actually purchase music.
oldguy
· 2 years ago
I haven't bought a Metallica product or concert ticket since they got me kicked off Napster (I didn't even have any Metallica in my share folder, only a couple of covers from other bands.) Prior to that I was a huge fan. [shrug] I also bought many cd's form bands I sampled through p2p sites.
Choco
· 2 years ago
After Napster went down, Audiogalaxy became a new hotspot for music sharing around the world. Even very obscure files were easily attainable with this service.
... I still miss it to this day. RIAA be cursed.
John
· 2 years ago
MP3.com was great, I interned there way back in the day. They had over a million songs you could download free from independant artists. Unfortunately I lost money as I invested in that sinking ship...live and learn!
Napster was also an eye-opener. It literally blew my mind seeing this supermarket of music with no check-out lines and no paying! Today there's better file-sharing apps, like GigaTribe, which is encrypted and let's you exchange huge files within a private network of friends: http://www.gigatribe.com
jay
· 2 years ago
NAJBOLJI SAJT KOJI JE UKINUT: WWW.ANDR.NET MAMICU IM
John
· 2 years ago
Seriously, how many times is it going to have to be said? MICROSOFT HAS NO INTENTIONS OF SUEING LINUX, OR ITS USERS. They simply brought it up to discuss a problem, they are looking for other ways to solve... And yeah you can look at linux cause its opensource. MS is not, and guess what? BASICALLY EVERY PROGRAM OUT THERE IS NOT OPENSOURCE.
People need to stop complaining about people making a living. Go to china or another communist country.
bb
· 2 years ago
Yes, I would definitely consider Microsoft to just, "making a living" and I am sure they are just barely getting by. I think you missed the point. These large corporations are shutting down smaller companies left and right, hence this article. Our resources are being taken away so that the large corporations can take more of our money. We are the ones trying to make a living and they are taking that from us.
Communism, HA!
Elliott
· 2 years ago
Remember that even though OLGA is down, MXTabs.net is relaunching as a legal tablature site this summer.
Jack Johnson
· 12 months ago
Yea but they still lack a huge number of tabs. Most of them you can click on and it will say they dont have the tab yet
One site i truly miss and used extensively is ShareReactor.
There are similar sites, but I don't think any compare to what the ShareReactor community was.
Tito
· 2 years ago
Aaaa Napster.../tear
I hate that we live in a world where you cant do anything without getting sued... When will these people understand that the internet belongs to the people! Music industry is a dinosaur that needs to remake their business model, the "service" of providing music in its classic format is dead (e.g. CD etc) They just got so powerful in their day that they can prolong their existence by throwing money and lawyers at the problem, but they are screwed because their problem is progress and that will never stop, they are dead and dont want to admit it. So please recording industry, die already so music can live free. As for all other types of media, movies etc, its pretty much the same thing. Other things like code, well i dont have time to type more, so maybe another time...
Dave
· 2 years ago
I certainly spent a lot more money on cd's when napster was still working. Word of mouth just doesn't work as well as easily accessible free samples. About a third of my cd collection is down to me downloading songs i wasn't looking for by accident. Happy days. Now i haven't bought a CD for like a year, coz i haven't been exposed to any new bands i like. Damn the RIAA
RIAA
· 2 years ago
Sup fags. You piece of shit communists. Gonna steal your rape dollars. Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh
Mike
· 2 years ago
There used to be a fabulous music lyrics archive wiki at www.lyrics.ch. I remember the day it was shut down. It was so good, I think I would pay to use it, even today.
Jeff
· 2 years ago
Olga was shut down for no good reason. People have been trading tab for decades so they could play music they love and learn to be better guitarists. Stupid laws shut down OLGA. Napster and the rest of RIAA's targets only further proves that the music business is all about shooting themselves in the foot. My massive music collection was brought about by searching for new stuff on napster and other p2p and bit torrent sites. I'd find a track (or album) that I loved, download it, then go buy it to support THE ARTIST. And the music I didn't pay for? Well, I USED to spend thousands of dollars a year going to live shows. Now I stay local and don't go to many big name concerts. I also steal more music than I ever did. RIAA needs to get real. Before digital music, there was tapes. My buddy would buy a new tape (album) and tell everyone how great it was. We'd either borrow it an dub it or give them a blank to copy the tape for us. It was great. When we really liked something, we'd buy the tape ourselves so we could have an original, complete with the artwork and liner notes. RIAA couldn't stop people from doing that. And they had no way to measure the dollars they were "losing" to dubbers. Now that everything is digital, they CAN track it. But they ignore the data that shows that people who 'steal' music, spend more on merchandise, go to more concerts, and buy more CD's. It's nonsense. Someone should organize a boycott on buying music for a few weeks until RIAA gets the message.
relaxing
· 2 years ago
word.com, the literature/art site from the late 90's/early 00's.
If anyone knows what actually became of it (and its content!), please reply to this comment!
gilbert king
· 2 years ago
I miss adcritic.com That site was the best for a good laugh.
Apreche
· 2 years ago
You forgot goatse.cx.
CSS
· 2 years ago
Great list, almost forgot about some of those guys
Anonymous
· 2 years ago
Slight correction: Imeem is not being sued by Warner Bros (who are actually one of their content partners). Mashable got the original story right (Imeem is being sued by Warner Music Group), and then cited their own story incorrectly. Warner Bros. and Warner Music group are two different companies.
Pete Cashmore
· 2 years ago
Yeah, I see that. Looks like a typo. Gonna fix.
Ki
· 2 years ago
Sik-sang being shut down was the final straw for me. Never again will I buy Sony!
fred
· 2 years ago
man, i used to spend hours on that site just reading genre and band descriptions. it was like a music history class. i miss it dearly.
as did i. of all the sites through the years, thats the site i miss most of all.
damn. that site was real.
Dean-O
· 2 years ago
Under "Napster" you wrote about > the time when sharing was OK
Dean-O
· 2 years ago
[sorry, original comment was chopped off] It never was - at least not by applicable law/s.
Freezer
· 2 years ago
The International Lyrics Server - shut down for the same reasons, and by the same people as OLGA. Going to one place (not named "Google") to find the words of damn near any song was awesome.
Also chiming in for a vote for AudioGalaxy.
Jim Jakubiec
· 2 years ago
Ah Napster...brings back the good old days. I still have much of the stuff on an old win 98 box. I tended to download stuff that was not readily available at the music store - Like a live version of Frank Zappa playing Purple Haze. And I never stopped buying CD's. Just Picked up a Rev. Horton Heat compilation yesterday. Frggin lawyers argh!
It is a shame that so many are gone now.. the list is actually much bigger... MP3.com might be the classic, when something so good, ends up being so bad.
phil hart
· 2 years ago
myspace can never replace mp3.com. mp3.com promoted bands to the point bands could sell CD's through mp3.com that mp3.com made themselves. of all the music sites, mp3.com was my favorite, and I have never found a direct replacement.
DeathtoRIAA
· 2 years ago
Awesome. Most of this stuff I thought was so true
Nick
· 2 years ago
Great one.
-drew-
· 2 years ago
why does it seem that nearly all of the sites listed above were shut down and/or crippled in some form by the RIAA/MPAA/BMAA? There has to be an independent study out there somewhere (not an anti-RIAA study...and INDEPENDENT study) showing that although there are repercussions to some of the sites above, the repercussions aren't nearly as inflated as "the man" would go to suggest.
slander
· 2 years ago
Napster was the AOL of file-sharing. When it became the first to get taken out by the RIAA, alot of us had mixed emotions about it. Sure, it set the precedent by which the money-mongers would go after P2P, but then again, it did give that small satisfaction one gets by bug-bombing a nest of cockroaches. 'Course, when that happened they started infesting Kazaa and WinMX...
sol
· 2 years ago
you arse
LinkShouter.com
· 2 years ago
If you have some useful or interesting links shout them out via www.LinkShouter.com. If you are an owner of some useful service you can get free traffic via LinkShouter. First search and then submit your to be #1 result item.
Lokito303
· 2 years ago
Oh my God.. Audiogalaxy that was the finest, creative and effective p2p ever!
you could find almost everything on it!
now i'm cursed to Soulseek and being limited. DEATH TO RIAA!
edleader
· 2 years ago
I've been using mp3Rocket. It cost me a small amount for the program, but well worth it so far. Lots of live and acoustic versions, etc.
Anyone else using it?
Napster ruled, though! This is me, jerking a tear for Napster....
Adam
· 2 years ago
Could TPB be on that list? Technically, it was shut down, for 3 days :P And back up, and flying higher than ever, thanks to the media hype :)
lol.
And well, yea suprnova was great, but you gotta remember, when they got taken down, 3 other sites popped up in it's place...there will always be an alternative :)
Then there was a time period where lyric sites got "attacked" or something...wasn't there? I can't remember the whole debacle exactly...
AdaMM
· 2 years ago
one fine site that wasn't mentioned: textz.com - book archive which was kind of intelectuall / leftwing / sf&f site - the very paradox was, that it wasn't shut down because of putting online commercial stuff (which was there too), but for an obscure essay by Adorno!! would be funny as a joke, but it's sadly true.
anon
· 2 years ago
They are never going to shut down demonoid the pirate bay and all the other torrent sites which have music and films. There are just to many and more always pop up when one gos down. They dont stand a chance. Also they havnt shut down limewire. Fuck the RIAA and MPAA
Oli
· 2 years ago
Pandora still works in the UK, just make sure you put in a US zipcode...
Motorcycle Guy
· 2 years ago
I always thought the biggest threat to the music industry was being able to download complete albums not just individual songs. I think downloading individual songs helps them.
DJ
· 2 years ago
AudioGalaxy Deserves to be there.
KillingTime
· 2 years ago
I've downloaded close to $3,000 JUST in music, not including illegal copys of software? so? Big deal.
the RIAA, and MPAA, as long as they do their job solely out of greed, will never win the heart of the users, and thus will NEVER stop piracy.
I've set up three bit torrent sites just last month, a music sharing network, a Crackz search engine, three video sites that deploy streams through modified server code on a Yahoo email server, and a multitude of other ventures.
I've helped users to d/l apps/cracks/music/videos/movies in the range of $45,000 in four months, and will continue to do so, all because Big Music, Big Government, and Big Content wants to play a game of Monopoly with ligit services.
My question is, what ever happened to company's being for the good of the people? Rubbish...
Tron
· 2 years ago
So what is the best p2p site out there now??
Sponex
· 2 years ago
Lime wire and bit torrent seem to be the current favourites of choice,
emule, kazaa, shareeza and napster were all good p2p networks although kazaa and shareeza are full of spyware and virsus like lime wire,
but the ultimate tool for finding music and file and stuff is "google" search google for something like find music using gogole and read all the literature u can and have a go at finding music archives.
milander
· 2 years ago
best p2p... DC++ or LDC++
google for either and make sure you have a decent share size, say, 40gb or more.
All Fantastic services. Shame that copyright infringement is still a big deal today. The future will surely include new bedroom producers as well as the sales (those .99 cent songs) of remixes, mixes, and mashups. Happy hunting!
All Comments
I like the syncronize with friend feature a lot. The only downside it the quality of the music files.
Spurnova has been ably replaced by these meta torrent search engines like Snarf-it and Isohunt, and torrent websites like demonoid.
I had never heard of singingfish before.
The only service that will probably be missed is OLGA. Their closure really sucked. I still dont think OLGA was breaking the law.
Until THEY get shut down, anyway. They are based in Russia and probably mob-owned!
Shoot... I still do that, only it's not as easy or handed to you on MySpace. It was the accidental stumbling on Napster that got me into a whole SLEW of new-to-me acts.
I also remember seeing photos of what I believe were the MP3.com offices being stripped of the pinball machines, massive servers and various other goodies (on their way to being pawned, most likely :P) which were obviously purchased in haste, just before the closure of the site.
i don't know what tubes you are stuck in, but over here it's getting much much easier to pirate. i'll take www.tv-links.co.uk and btjunkie.org over any other p2p app/website that has come up through the days.
if you think the lawyers are winning, you aren't connected enough.
Audiogalaxy should definitely be #11!
alas...
Rex
:(
Napster was full of crap but it was functional in it's time.
If someone took all of Mashable's content -- every single post -- and made it available on mashaholic.com, complete with an M+ logo, what would Pete and the guys at Mashable think? What if the service was even in some ways a little better than Mashable because it had additional features like a decent search and a cleaner UI? What if it became more popular because of those things, and mashable lost traffic to mashaholic.com?
Seems so simple to me... like I said I don't really understand it.
That site was way ahead of it's time...
1. Patents don't have much to do with code, they have to do with methods of doing things. E.g. Microsoft has a patent on a network buffer accessible by multiple drivers in a certain processor mode. If anyone else implements such a buffer, then they break the patent, no matter if they provide sourcecode or not. No matter if they wrote their code from scratch or stole it from Microsoft, it's illegal either way.
2. Microsoft shares sourcecode of Windows with MVPs, universities, businesses, governments, in other words, pretty much anyone who would want to see windows sourcecode can.
I spent money on itunes through pandora because it was more convenient than pirating music. That's a EXTREMELY HARD thing to accomplish online, to have people willing to pay for something that they can technically get for free. I'm hoping that when I go back to the states, pandora will still be around.
Fuck ya RIAA. I wish the band stardust was around, cuz music DON'T sound better with you!
I use Last.fm by choice
- Martin Reed
Interesting that all but two of the entries here are related to the music industry. One would think at some point they would stop spending millions on lawyers and instead invest in the development of services which match the very obvious desires of their customers.
I spent more time making lists on songs there and virtual mixtapes than I did on Napster downloading the damn songs
... I still miss it to this day. RIAA be cursed.
Napster was also an eye-opener. It literally blew my mind seeing this supermarket of music with no check-out lines and no paying! Today there's better file-sharing apps, like GigaTribe, which is encrypted and let's you exchange huge files within a private network of friends: http://www.gigatribe.com
People need to stop complaining about people making a living. Go to china or another communist country.
Communism, HA!
There are similar sites, but I don't think any compare to what the ShareReactor community was.
I hate that we live in a world where you cant do anything without getting sued... When will these people understand that the internet belongs to the people! Music industry is a dinosaur that needs to remake their business model, the "service" of providing music in its classic format is dead (e.g. CD etc) They just got so powerful in their day that they can prolong their existence by throwing money and lawyers at the problem, but they are screwed because their problem is progress and that will never stop, they are dead and dont want to admit it. So please recording industry, die already so music can live free. As for all other types of media, movies etc, its pretty much the same thing. Other things like code, well i dont have time to type more, so maybe another time...
Damn the RIAA
People have been trading tab for decades so they could play music they love and learn to be better guitarists.
Stupid laws shut down OLGA.
Napster and the rest of RIAA's targets only further proves that the music business is all about shooting themselves in the foot.
My massive music collection was brought about by searching for new stuff on napster and other p2p and bit torrent sites. I'd find a track (or album) that I loved, download it, then go buy it to support THE ARTIST.
And the music I didn't pay for?
Well, I USED to spend thousands of dollars a year going to live shows.
Now I stay local and don't go to many big name concerts.
I also steal more music than I ever did.
RIAA needs to get real.
Before digital music, there was tapes.
My buddy would buy a new tape (album) and tell everyone how great it was.
We'd either borrow it an dub it or give them a blank to copy the tape for us.
It was great. When we really liked something, we'd buy the tape ourselves so we could have an original, complete with the artwork and liner notes.
RIAA couldn't stop people from doing that.
And they had no way to measure the dollars they were "losing" to dubbers.
Now that everything is digital, they CAN track it.
But they ignore the data that shows that people who 'steal' music, spend more on merchandise, go to more concerts, and buy more CD's.
It's nonsense.
Someone should organize a boycott on buying music for a few weeks until RIAA gets the message.
If anyone knows what actually became of it (and its content!), please reply to this comment!
as did i. of all the sites through the years, thats the site i miss most of all.
damn. that site was real.
It never was - at least not by applicable law/s.
Also chiming in for a vote for AudioGalaxy.
If this is you from Clearwater, drop me a line!
Mark Buckman
PlateWire.com
that was the finest, creative and effective p2p ever!
you could find almost everything on it!
now i'm cursed to Soulseek and being limited. DEATH TO RIAA!
Anyone else using it?
Napster ruled, though! This is me, jerking a tear for Napster....
lol.
And well, yea suprnova was great, but you gotta remember, when they got taken down, 3 other sites popped up in it's place...there will always be an alternative :)
Then there was a time period where lyric sites got "attacked" or something...wasn't there? I can't remember the whole debacle exactly...
the RIAA, and MPAA, as long as they do their job solely out of greed, will never win the heart of the users, and thus will NEVER stop piracy.
I've set up three bit torrent sites just last month, a music sharing network, a Crackz search engine, three video sites that deploy streams through modified server code on a Yahoo email server, and a multitude of other ventures.
I've helped users to d/l apps/cracks/music/videos/movies in the range of $45,000 in four months, and will continue to do so, all because Big Music, Big Government, and Big Content wants to play a game of Monopoly with ligit services.
My question is, what ever happened to company's being for the good of the people? Rubbish...
emule, kazaa, shareeza and napster were all good p2p networks although kazaa and shareeza are full of spyware and virsus like lime wire,
but the ultimate tool for finding music and file and stuff is "google" search google for something like find music using gogole and read all the literature u can and have a go at finding music archives.
google for either and make sure you have a decent share size, say, 40gb or more.