Today British and Dutch police confirmed the shutting down of the world's most popular source of pre-release music, OiNK's Pink Palace. OiNK was an invite-only torrent hub with an estimated 180,000 registered users who could upload and download music, software, e-books, and more at blazing-fast speeds, making it a big problem for the music industry. Over sixty 2007 releases were leaked onto the site before their release.
On the other side, however, OiNK was also an avenue for underground artists and severely independent bands to get their music into the hands and ears of the web-savvy masses. I, along with many other blogger friends of mine, used OiNK to discover new bands that we normally wouldn't hear about in the daily PR clusterfuck of "hot new bands." While the big labels will be gloating at the news of OiNK's demise, many smaller bands and labels might not feel so lucky.
Now that OiNK is gone, where shall we get our pre-release fix? Where can we so easily unearth new bands to hype? I won't mention any here (I do remember Idolator sort of "outing" OiNK with a series of posts about OiNK's 10 most downloaded torrents of the week, which probably didn't help in retrospect), but they are out there. You just have to know where to look.
Hopefully, with bands like Radiohead and now Oasis and Jamiroquai "leaking" their albums themselves without the unessential middle men (including torrent sites and record labels, who strangely do share common ground here), perhaps this won't be too big of a blow. I believe there can be a sane world of music appreciation where both the artist and the fan can coequally benefit. If Radiohead actually made the reported $8 on average per album download, they're certainly doing much better than they were on EMI, and we fans got 2007's most anticipated album in a refreshing, PR-blitz-less 10 day wait. I can't help but think that the music industry in for something extraordinary in 2008. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Feds Shut Down OiNK Torrent Site
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Just out of curiosity, what bands did you find through this site?
interpol did it
Arizona, Seabear, Deer Tick, Canon Blue, Buildings Breeding -- those are just a handful of bands that I might not have heard about without OiNK.
hahah. yeah, "in retrospect" ...as if it seemed like a good idea at the time. people are idiots...
interpol sucks ass, what a bunch of bastards...money hungry assholes
If the music industry didn't have its head up its ass they would figure out how to make music people would actually pay for despite being able to download it for free. I always use torrents to preview new albums or unknown bands so I know if they're worth buying. And yes, I do support the bands I like by actually purchasing their CDs!
RIP OiNK!
In my opinion, it was the influx of 'new' users being invited to the site that really helped to bring its demise. People would just invite loads of 'internet friends', rather than people they know/knew in person; allowing the place to become more vulnerable than it already was.
Ironically, most, if not all, advance copies of albums leaked onto the site came from other sources of file sharing communities. What could be found at this now shutdown palace? More than a lot of users who search the net for music could ever accumulate or fathom. It was an ideal place for internet users who had a genuine approach to supplying rips done by themselves, in the hopes for getting rips by others in a trade-off so to speak.
In hindsight, a good thing to come out of this loss is the inability for idiot, ignorant internet browsers to keep acting like they're the shit; even though they contributed nothing to the site in regards to their own effort of buying music to be posted (freeload leechers). Perhaps next time, if something like this arises in the future, the first invited users will be infinitely more selective in who they allow to be privy to such a convenient community that was intended for like minded individuals, rather than people who show a lack of responsibility; hiding behind virtual anonymity, and never trying to keep the community safe.
Yeh... ultimately the fall of OiNK sucks, but there are 10's of thousands of users who didn't belong there (yes, this is subjective and partly relative, but F|_|CK them anyway).
Remember folks, servers log traffic, log chat, log lots of things....it was bound to happen. The internet might be public, but eventually governments will get their hands on what is needed to shut down persons who breach [said] copyright laws, or infringe upon them.
Blogs suck! Blog hostees create problems too...by not showing enough foresight to how certain topics, and responses to them, ripple affect potential detriment to places and persons (there were people who posted comments about OiNK and handing out invites [on blogs] in the past; stupid; it was supposed to be private).
This is the first post I have created for any blog site, ever.
Maybe you just have to work harder to find new bands now.
Your whingeing sense of entitlement is no different to that of any of the other sinking ships in the music business you'd likely make fun of!
Boo hoo. Figure out a new way to find bands. Be smarter, faster and stronger. Consider this an opportunity!
Isn't there something inherently wrong with being a music lover and stealing music?
^^ (to the above comment) The people who allow online music communities to thrive are the people who support artists, thus, buying music. And ideally, these people are providing stuff for others who provide; by purchasing, music that other individuals do not necessarily want to first spend their money on. All in all, music is being bought. How else would it become available under these pretenses of online music communities? DUH!
And it isn't theft, it is illegal copying!
^(response) so music is being purchased, but just at a much much smaller fraction? Eg. 1 purchased CD is shared among 1000's of people? is that fair?
"Isn't there something inherently wrong with being a music lover and stealing music?"
Isn't there something inherently wrong with being a music lover and feeding a corporate machine in which record labels take by far the largest section of profits from their artists and propagate a mentality that promotes "selling out", commercialization and selection of music to fit the current popular trend, rather than actually promoting the creativity and artistry of the music itself?
last anon: exactly my feelings. radiohead making about $8 per album is so much more than they would have made attached to EMI
Maybe try a spell check? Or at least some punctuation. How are you going to be taken seriously?
Why is everyone so interested in the ins and outs of who gets what slice of the money pie in the Record Biz?
These justifications I keep seeing where people defend theft with "well the labels get most of the money and they suck!"
Its nothing more than an ad hominem tactic to change the subject with something completely unrelated.
Bottom line - Oink encouraged theft, and did not encourage some sort of Music Industry revolution no matter how much you want to believe it.
Anyone have new suggestions for where to discover new music now that OiNK is gone? I've never found another torrent site I love as much...
After looking at different stories around the net it appears that Oink's Admin had been recieving donation's up to $30,000 a month, tax free!! That is what could of brought a little more heat on him. I personally was glad to donate even if some or most was pocketed. P-Diddy doesn't need another jet!!!!!!!!!!! Look at the music industry and gross expendatures of artist, producers, label', etc...
I never used Oink, but as I understood it, in addition to new unheard material, they also had high quality recordings that were not obtainable through commercial outlets.
If the recording industry made everything avaiable that consumers wanted at a reasonable price, that was of decent quality, and unrestricted, than Oink would never have existed in the first place.
On the other hand, Oink sounds like it was a bit elitist--which goes against the grain of what music is all about.
Anyone have any idea how to get on the indie.torrents IRC? I was about to go pleading for an invite, but you need a key for the channel.
OiNK was just another place for elitist assholes to "share" music. It didn't inspire change in current industry practices, and the guy in charge was being handed money for files he didn't own. OiNK might have been used to share lesser-known artists songs, but for every one "indie" artist being shared, there were four or five major releases being "traded" for free. There should be a way to freely share your music if you're an artist on the rise, but that choice should be yours, not that of an invite only internet social club that rips albums for profit. Fact is, there were thousands of OiNK users using OiNK rips as a substitute for buying albums. If you're making music for free, OiNK's great, but if you're trying to make a living of it, OiNK was a serious problem.
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