Gee, this a good idea
February 25, 2002 5:23 PM Subscribe

Gee, this a good idea (NYT reg req) - The New York Times discusses the growing popularity of .zip whole album downloads on Audiogalaxy. The article is also kind enough to include a step-by-step how-to for idiots like me who want free music but haven't thought of this before. Thanks!
posted by dydecker (37 comments total)

Wow. I didn't know Audiogalaxy could do that. Thanks for the tip, NYT.
posted by gramcracker at 5:28 PM on February 25, 2002

Buuut, it's not working for me. Maybe Audiogalaxy removed the word from their database? Anybody else not coming up with any results?
posted by gramcracker at 5:30 PM on February 25, 2002

or.. how to ruin it for everyone else. thanks, nyt.
posted by ronv at 5:32 PM on February 25, 2002

I like this quote: Most music executives remain unaware of this new wrinkle in downloading. Fred Croshal, the general manager of Maverick Records, said he had never heard of fans exchanging albums as zip files. "The tech kids are moving much faster than we are," he said. "By the time we agree on anything, it's already seven years old."

Yeah, damn those zip files -- new tech at its finest!

and: "If I were in charge, I would put viruses everywhere on these services," he said. "That would stop Little Johnny from stealing this stuff."

Sure it will. :-)
posted by AdamJ at 5:38 PM on February 25, 2002

That whole zip search thing isn't working for me either. I'm going to agree with ronv here thar NYTimes just ruined the whole movement on Audiogalaxy zip files...

One can only hope it'll take off on WinMX...
posted by jacobw at 5:43 PM on February 25, 2002

I just tried searching for 'album' ..and got a bunch of 'full album' listings. I haven't bothered to download any, but I'd imagine a lot of them are .zip files, either that or entire albums as a single mp3 (less cool).
posted by chacal at 5:50 PM on February 25, 2002

Well Audiogalaxy must have woke up this morning, read the NYT and blocked the word "zip". (You can see a them if you type in "file" though).
posted by dydecker at 5:51 PM on February 25, 2002

"Entire" works pretty well too.
posted by smackfu at 5:53 PM on February 25, 2002

Eh, there's always IRC, it was there before Napster, and still is.
posted by riffola at 5:54 PM on February 25, 2002

Maybe it will stop little Johnny, but little Norton and little McAfee are bigger.
posted by dhartung at 6:05 PM on February 25, 2002

"If I were in charge..."

That's the point of peer to peer networks and other workarounds discovered after the Napster fiasco. There's no one in charge. The people who think they are in charge must really hate that.

"and blocked the word 'zip'."

Maybe not. Zipping albums is not widely popular. Maybe there's just not enough people online at all times doing this. The reporter might have just gotten lucky to have uncovered it.
posted by ZachsMind at 6:08 PM on February 25, 2002

Archived songs have been distributed through irc, usenet, and ftp far longer than the mp3 revolution. It just so happened that back then, the low profile of a pre-www internet made it insubstantial.

Of course now they're wise to us, Johnny.

Dang.

Now us "tech-savvy" kiddies will have to start remembering stuff like arc, arj, ace, and rar. Or go ultra modern with the cd-burning crowd and just head straight for iso, bin, and ccd, 'cause there's always a couple hundred music geeks that'll want the cd-rom enhanced extras on someone's box set.
posted by linux at 6:09 PM on February 25, 2002

Much as I love file sharing, and especially AudioGalaxy, which for my money is even better than Napster (no limit to results, lots o' ephemera and obscure stuff), downloading entire albums seems a bit declasse. I mean, if you like it that much, why not just buy the album? I use AG to find out about music that I would never hear about in the mainstream -- the thought of losing this valuable resource because people want to cop the entire Eminem/BSpears album (with attendant RIAA wrath) without paying for it is just annoying. And the real musicians (Kruder & Dorfmeister and the other !K7 geniuses) deserve the financial support that comes from buying their albums. To my mind, there is a big difference between downloading Kruder's latest remix (only available on 12 inch vinyl import for $25) and downloading the entire K&D Sessions double CD. Maybe I'm just getting old.
posted by fellorwaspushed at 6:11 PM on February 25, 2002

fellorwaspushed, so I take it you feel morally justified by finacially supporting the "REAL" musicians and stealing from the rest. It's good you have boundaries.
posted by mikhail at 6:19 PM on February 25, 2002

Of course, there's always EDonkey2000...
posted by Samizdata at 6:27 PM on February 25, 2002

Please, let's keep the morality out of this and concentrate on the increased stealing efficiency.

Also, if the file doesn't actually say zip in the name, it's probably a full length mp3 (concat'd together), which is good for nothing.
posted by smackfu at 6:44 PM on February 25, 2002

Also, if the file doesn't actually say zip in the name, it's probably a full length mp3 (concat'd together), which is good for nothing.

This is easy to get around. It's like when you might host an mp3 on a free internet ISP. Rename the 3 meg mp3 file to britneyspears_oops_I_did_it_again.gif, upload it to the web, and let whoever downloads it rename it..

If you d/led a 70 meg file entitled britneyspears_fullalbum_zipped.mp3, you might be able to figure out that you need to change the file extension to use it. It's a cheap but easy trick, since servers only check the extension of the file, they don't actually try to read it's contents. Not that I'm advocating that practice, I'm just saying it can be done.

I think you can probably get audio software which will break up the tracks (you'd have to do it manually) and encode them in individual mp3s... I don't know of such a software, but I'm sure it exists.
posted by insomnyuk at 7:17 PM on February 25, 2002

while it sounds cool, wouldn't it be very easy to put a virus into one of these zip files. Sure, have the adio files, but also pop in a little virus and most people wouldn't be the wiser. Seems like recommending this (downloading zip files) to the masses isn't the best idea...just look at e-mail attatchments.
posted by jmd82 at 7:31 PM on February 25, 2002

just as a side note, you can't get a virus from passive reading of data (which is what sound and images are).
posted by syn at 7:48 PM on February 25, 2002

Yeah, but there are a lot of people dumb enough to click on "Oops_I_Did_It_Again-Britney_Spears.vbs" or "Baby_One_More_Time-Britney_Spears.exe" thinking it will play music.
posted by hitsman at 8:30 PM on February 25, 2002

Sucks to be them.
posted by AdamJ at 9:27 PM on February 25, 2002

Cut mp3's without decoding them. Small, slick, freeware. I've cut 45 minute files into 3-minute chunks with this pretty painlessly.
posted by twitch at 10:26 PM on February 25, 2002

Looks pretty snazzy, twitch. Thanks for the link!
posted by youhas at 1:57 AM on February 26, 2002

I like downloading full albums. Its nice to have a album that comes from the same source so you don't have audio volume go up or down or a different quality. Its all uniform.
posted by andryeevna at 2:24 AM on February 26, 2002

Judging from past Internet experiences, if the use of zip files grows, it won't be long before someone spreads a free program made especially for converting entire albums into zip files.

lol... I don't believe this is actually in the NYtimes. How far are they behind? Yeah, rip cd. Send files to winzip. Name zip. 5 seconds max. NYTimes is l337.

Broadband makes downloading 100mb a lot easier. And 160 gig hard drives aren't a hiderance either.
posted by andryeevna at 2:36 AM on February 26, 2002

It would be cool...to have p2p software that read m3u playlists and then went out and grabbed the titles. Then you could swap mix tapes too.
posted by mecran01 at 5:26 AM on February 26, 2002

It would be cooler . . . to have software that read my mind, then went out, grabbed what I wanted, downloaded it to my mp3 player in exactly the order I wanted and didn't have any viruses.

Also, it would cool if the software gave you an orgasm.

Anyone know of such a program?
posted by lawtalkinguy at 6:33 AM on February 26, 2002

damnit, sorry.
posted by lawtalkinguy at 6:39 AM on February 26, 2002

Tripple post stopping software would be the coolest. And a pony.

But seriously, although they may be miles behind its good to see this knowledge being shared. I'm ,sure they're really popular over at RIAA HQ right now.
posted by nedrichards at 7:04 AM on February 26, 2002

Stop it, stobbitrightnow, I say! I don't get my cable modem installed until Saturday, and you're all making me terribly jealous.
posted by alumshubby at 7:41 AM on February 26, 2002

Linux: You forgot lha/lzh. And what about PowerPacker? I'm waiting for Diskmasher to return, damnit.
posted by Su at 7:53 AM on February 26, 2002

syn - you can't get a virus from passive reading of data

Yes, you can, unfortunately. It's called a buffer overflow. Look over here for a detailed explanation.

Note that this does not mean WinAmp or any other MP3 player is actually vulnerable to such an attack.
posted by NortonDC at 8:14 AM on February 26, 2002

Yes, all the various sources to find mp3's and music files alike are eventually picked up and reported on by some author who think its the next new way to find music.

"Its the new wave!"

I've read many of these articles just to see what they have to say, and it surprises me that not much is said regarding newgroups. Although, I've uncovered articles singing newgroups praises. This is my main source for collecting musical albums as opposed to singles. For that I use morpheus or some gnutella clone.

Although you can not query a musical database for files, you can go through the list picking and choosing what you want. You can request files...and usually within a day the entire album is up waiting for you and others. And more often then less, all the mp3's are 192kbps or greater, nicely encoded, and have perfect mp3 tags.

And one of the beautiful things about newgroups, is that many people post parity sets. So say you post an entire album that is composed of say 18 rars and you create a 5 piece parity set. There's no need for everybody to come screaming for reposts because with the parfiles you can usually rebuild the missing rar files you need

Anyways, i'm off topic...
posted by bobadoci at 9:20 AM on February 26, 2002

While it's certainly sneaky to get those tunes by the filters, you no longer know what you're getting anymore. All you can do is look at a tracklisting and the file size, and guess as to whether the album inside was encoded at a high bitrate or not. Not to mention the fact that most people that use these types of services still don't know jack about properly ripping cds and using quality rippers/encoders/hardware.

Though it's great for people who don't care if their mp3s are 128kbps with audible pops in them every now and then.
posted by yupislyr at 12:17 PM on February 26, 2002

After all this crap I've actually gone back to IRC. Finally downloaded the whole album Nas - Illmatic.
posted by MarkO at 11:42 PM on February 26, 2002

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Gee, this a good idea February 25, 2002 5:23 PM Subscribe

Gee, this a good idea
February 25, 2002 5:23 PM Subscribe