Oh, the possibilities!

32X CD-R media is now at 15c/disc at PC Club, my supplier of choice. I recall specials in the past of 10c/disc, and even $0/100 with rebate, but those appear to have faded away. So, the current market is 15c/each, 5c less than the 20c from last year.

Two years ago, one could get $5/album, but now consumers are becoming smarter. Or dumber, and sheepisher, with programs like KaZaA. Some even own burners, but are too lazy to download themselves, even if they have high-speed DSL. Which is fine with me, its their loss. Plus, I know people. I know people.

Nowadays, consumers are willing to buy an album for $2-$3, some even demand $1, but I try to not let that deal close. Its just money.

FTP Search is now down, but alternatives like Oth.net exist.

Has the end came? All queries on Audiogalaxy return blocked songs, even songs from the Simpsons. Heck, Richard Stallman - Free Software is banned due to "copyright restrictions." All downloads in progress have been halted. It's over. Farewell, Audiogalaxy. The best is gone.

Possibly rap's most anticipated rap album has been released today by RNS. This is about a month in advance of the release date of June 4th.

There's been fake various floating around, containing only the hooks looped for a 5:00 duration. Audiogalaxy has them, WinMX has them, and they've probably crept into other P2P programs. Which is why vanilla P2P sucks: no branding. But that's another entry.

As for Eminem_-_The_Eminem_Show-2002-RNS.tar, getting it was very difficult. I joined a group on AG and they kindly sent it out, but I never got the NFO and most songs took forever to download because the sender was behind a firewall (as was I), meaning others not behind a firewall had to have the song first. Grabbing a spot on the XDCC IRC bots was even more difficult.

One channel set up four bots dedicated specifically to The Eminem Show and nothing else. Another channel set up three. Most had a queue limit of 10, but some allowed the queue to grow vastly -- one bot said it would take 77 hours before I could start downloading. Luckily, I eventually claimed my space in one of the 10-user bots and within 20 minutes moved to user 2 of 11. As of now I haven't received the tar, but declined three offers implically because of the 180s time limit to accept or decline. I will get in this time.

Back to Audiogalaxy, groups had to rename it with their name in the artist ID so AG wouldn't confuse it with the looped versions, of which their are thousands of sources. When sending a song AG always picks the most popular version, so one could never send the real version unless more people have it than the looped versions. Ah well.

One last thing. In the channel a regular suspected they (whoever that is) would release on a Friday so we couldn't sell it at school. He was right.

I discovered another use for IRC (other than chat) today: MP3s. On Zerodaymp3, they distribute latest releases. This (IRC and FTP) is where your music comes from before it reaches other P2Ps, folks. Zerodaymp3 requires no contribution to join or download, and unlike #mp3xdcc I rarely see advertisements. Of course, it's just one place to get the latest releases, but there's no junk there and the bot's connections are fast.

Zerodaymp3 and others get their music from ripping groups, the most famous (well-deserved) being RNS. They have shells, FTPs, and fast lines to distribute rips (as tar files) to high priority users first. Once the reaches them, they can distribute it to others, and so on until the lowest level is reached (Audiogalaxy/Blubster/FastTrack/Gnutella(yuck)/etc.) The archives are interesting, containing an nfo file (usually with nice ASCII art), an sfv file (for checksums, use 'sfv'), a playlist as m3u, and of course the MP3s. These files are usually stripped away not shared on garden variety P2P.

a-g-g.com is an excellent website used to download full albums. I had no idea who put their hard work into it, until I stumbled across a post by oneself. He says a-g-g.com is hosted on a DSL connection, which accounts for the port 81 redirection. Currently the site seems to be down at the moment, but when online downloading full albums on AG is immensively easier.

I ripped the Resident Evil CD (technically, not a soundtrack) today. Here's the track list:

• Fear Factory - Invisible Wounds (The Suture Mix)
• Static-X - Anything But This
• Rammstein - Halleluja
• Ill Nino - What Comes Around (Day of The Dead Mix)
• Mudvayne - Dig (Everything and Nothing Mix)
• Method Man - Release Do Delf (Prodigy Mix)
• Saliva - 800
• Five Pointe O - The Infinity
• Resident Evil - The Umbrella Corporation
• Marilyn Manson - Resident Evil Main Theme
• Marilyn Manson - Seizure of Power
• Marilyn Manson - Reunion
• Marilyn Manson - Cleansing

All in all, this CD was a disappointment. Any serious metal addict will already have Mudvayne - Dig (Everything and Nothing Mix) from their album The Beginning of All Things To End. We already have Rammstein - Hallelujah from Rammstein's album Mutter. The producers need to realize they can't please fans by selling us music we already have.

Yet, there are gems. Static-X's song was previously unreleased, as where Slipknot's, Marilyn's, Coal Chamber's, Crystal Method's, Fear Factory's, Depeche Mode's, Ill Nino's, and Saliva. Istealmymusic's rating: C

• A - Buy the CD
• B - Borrow the CD from a friend
• C - Download the MP3s when they're available
• D - Don't bother

It's 11:55PM here, nearing 21 April. rho wants us to in effect, boycott Slashdot, by becoming a typical user - browsing articles, not reading any comments. We'll see how that works by 27 April. Getting late (11:57PM), the Blackout has almost began.

Well, it's the end of an era. Since May 2001, it was possible on Audiogalaxy to send songs you don't have to other users. This circumvented Audiogalaxy's blocked songs -- the universally-despised "search prohibited" -- and allowed users to download any song they please. Public for at least two months, this bug has been fixed.

Audiogalaxy's bug exists because when you send a song, it does not necessarily come from you. Being P2P, Audiogalaxy finds the most popular version -- even if it's not the version you have -- and queues it in the recipient's queue just as if it was a normal download. Now that Audiogalaxy closed the hole, their requirements on sending are a bit more strict:

• Your satellite must be on
• You must have the song in your shared directory

Still, for us serious about music sharing on Audiogalaxy, this is not a problem.