poll: Preferred Mirrors

http://www.zippyshare.com/
http://4up.me/
for me free and fast download

edweste

When you upload to it, just a matter of minutes they take your links out, even before our posts, before no one knows about the links.

I realized that most people who voted in ul.to, are people downloading files, not the people who upload.

Do you see the logical mistake in your argumentation? If the links disappear immediately, how comes that I can (and do) download tons of stuff every day via uploaded? Must be a miracle...

Lukie

I have a dynamic IP and I have had days before I can download the next file on some hosts
can you tell me why dokx1

You do sth wrong.

Either you do not get a new IP despite what your ISP says, or you do not clean your cookies - are you downloading via browser?

With Jdownloader and a dynamic IP/reconnect the OCH won't block your download, I did this a hundred times.

MRSFL

The rest of servers which you are talking about, don't have anything like that.

There is no - I repeat for you: no service which provides a free fast download (of a big amount of files!) without a hassle like captchas, slow speed, no resume etc. over a longer period of time. Mediafire/Zippyshare etc. are good for single, small file - good luck downloading a 4GB-Kontakt sampler with that hosts.

You have to use torrents or edk2 for that, but then you have to find people who seed/share, and torrents die very soon.

i can download 2 files at once from uploaded.to as freeuser!

1 with firefox and the 2nd with jdownloader. works quite good.
so all in all 250kb/s for both files.

but a static ip - but uploaded.to seems to cancel sometimes the 1 hour waiting time. im able to download again after 5-10 mins until 1 file has finished. really strange - but positive strange

pitchtwit

Something important is that these sites are always coming and going, and also changing over time - so it might be good to have this vote as an ongoing thing - maybe a little widget at the top which you can always click on - saying which one is currently your favourite - and letting you change that whenever you want.

Well said, you have to be flexible with your OCHs, there can be a bust next week, remember Megaupload, Filesonic etc.? I am doing that game for over 15 years now, it's just a funny sport.

why not Media Fire ? i think its way better ...

Netload seems to work good for me as a free user (more than double the speed than ul.to) but the best seems to be unybites. Maximun download speed and no captcha!

For posts that are less than 200 mb Zippyshare should be used I believe

I think all that file-hosters are crappy and not accesible to all users.
MediaFire-Zyddu-ZippyShare-LimeLinx...
Thats my top file-hosters.
FREE is FREE... or not ?


well said

Lol, why not ask the uploaders if they send you the stuff via mail?

Sorry but Rapidshare is the only one I've ever known to be solid. I'm actually very puzzled as to why it's been left out of the contenders for the vote. I chose Uploaded in the end, as that's always been my second choice.... BUT it was only by default and I would STILL prefer Rapidshare any day over those other shitty ones in this list.

Mediafire is by far the fastest for free users

what about Zippyshare?

FREE is FREE... or not ?

Of course the choices given in the poll are not really good for free users. Mediafire and Zippyshare are great, but why they're not in the poll can be seen in the OP:

I have analyzed mirrors that our contributors choose to upload to

So, contributors generally don't chose MF and ZS, very probably because they can't make money with these services.

This is in no way specific to AudioZ: the same * happens in a lot of places, esp. since the MU debacle.
Rarely will someone upload without some kind of reward : they do spend time uploading the stuff.
The question is to know where is the balance.

Anyway, at anytime you can ask yourself: do I really need this item (library, app)? and should I encourage the use of such crappy links?

All the options are slow,none are free and all are just for money making.
i'm not interested in making a few cents for you leeches. goodbye Audioz...i'll go somewhere else

Personally I don't mind too much but:
I find with NOVA in jdownloader when you start the download it just gets a 7byte file!!

Uploaded is good, but if you add just add the peeplink and not the actual uploaded link it seems to fault and not grab the file links, not a big issue really

rapidgator i always have issues with, not sure why

Personally the more hosts the better in my opinion, nothing sucks more than to have only 2 or 3 hosts for everything, one other thing... it is nice to have hosts which allow resume

I choose netload, all links is scheduled easily on idm and they won't changed. extabit can't used on more than 1pc,ul.to link hardly to scheduled on idm,the links have expired time so we have to refresh the links

ifolder is the best filehoster i know of. you can download limitless as a free user! freakenery.ru is using this hoster since years. never had problem and i never paid anything.

No dokx1 there's not logical mistake when things are random, I have premium account in ul.to for months.
Some user have their links broken in minutes, but some stay up for weeks.

You can check by your self dokx1, when a new article begins, we have just some hours before ul.to shot the links, but some links still works fines, Random but not logical, there are millions of links they need to shot everyday, so it's a manual task to avoid mistakes.

I realized that big packs with ul.to just work some minutes after article is published.

Some people mentioned MEDIAFIRE, why it's not on the pool? We can D/L 3.12 Mb per second with Mediafire for free users.

choose NETLOAD SUPER SPEED!!!!

Welcome to Sunnyville

edweste

I realized that big packs with ul.to just work some minutes after article is published.

That's very easy to explain, not only the leechers are lurking around here, but also some publishers. For example it's quite useless to post Soniccouture stuff, obviously some company members are scanning Audioz 24/7 to delete their links. Native Instruments on the other hand tend not to delete their stuff, I guess they just tolerate the leechers.

@ dokx1

The most intolerant devs are "Plugin-Alliance" [so called Fascist-Alliance by me!]. They are used to it to "let kill" links very fast. It's OBVIOUS that the developers are here on AudioZ too – like MR. Rob Papen.

so you'll soon have another rule a certain uploader will not care about. count it on the list. this gettin' really sunn.. eh' funny somehow.

Yes! mediafire is super! mediafire is fastest for free users!

for Mediafire voters: it's funny, i use free mediafire to host some files (i have 3 different free accounts)and all works perfect, but what happend today ? i recieved a email by the Mediafire Account Service, they wrote:

"The file xxx.rar violates the MediaFire Terms of Service. Due to it being distributed from your account, it has been removed. Also, a Strike has been placed against your account and can lead to a termination of service.

Check our policy violations page for more information.

Thank you for using Media...."

i use mediafire since a long time, but never get some messages before (NOTE: that xxx.rar was a harmless rendered jpg PICTURE packed as .rar, but tagged as "Crack Manufacture", so i thought it is a "Filter" that mediafire use (maybe for cooked cockaine instead of cracked-appz hrhr), but since i get this first message today, it goes "bam, bam, bam" means: more & more files with the same msg are deleted by mediafire on my accounts (im between in feeling sad and be a fuxxxxx rock star after that lost's *lol*). seriously: it's absolute new for me, so to all the mediafire "hypers" here, notice: i like this hoster to but if this is a new "feature" of this crackheads hehe, you better overthink... (you know what i mean, my engl. suck at this point so much that i made a second: point

@tracer --

been seeing the same thing with a number of people...you're not alone.

I'm also wondering why so many are hyping up mediafire. It is true that you can download very fast from them, BUT 1) they're not listed in the poll, so it doesn't seem in the cards this site will demand they be used by contributors, and 2) they are deleting files over TOS violations more quickly than just about any other hoster (often the same day the file was uploaded), and 3) after the Megaupload problems, mediafire was one of the first to be saying they would absolutely have no problem handing over your IP address to any gov't entity that wants to know who downloaded a file. So yeh, they are fast, but they come with a whole mess of problems.

I think the more interesting question about what's going on with this new poll would be to try to figure out why there are some link sites that regularly use much better free file hosts than we do here, while still making things work out for the uploaders?

Example: I regularly go to a site, MyRls, which specializes in movies and TV stuff. That site doesn't compete with any of the sort of files we have here (so I'm not trying to spam for them), but does appear to be a very busy, active site with links to files that can be fairly large. For just about every single file listed at that site, they are using zippyshare or jumbofiles, or mediafire. All fast, solid, free hosts. I never read there of any complaints by uploaders saying they are not making enough money, or griping about who got a file uploaded first, or arguing about whether a second person should be allowed to put up mirrors for a file. So why is it consistently a problem here? How come some sites can work this out, but not AudioZ? Another example is a huge site called Mobilism, which specializes in software for mobile devices. They use megashares on almost all their links, which is a really fast and free file host, and I also don't see any complaints there by uploaders saying they are not making enough money.

So my question about this poll is why is it that some sites can make it work with better hosts, and we can't seem to do that at AudioZ? I think if we can figure that out, we'd actually be getting somewhere. As it stands now, all I'm seeing is more griping about which host is better amongst a list of fairly crappy hosting companies, none of which are all that good for free accounts.

Maybe it's like The-RoBoT says. Maybe it's just,

Welcome to Sunnyville

@rico88

I think the problem is the so called "exclusivity". From my own experience, it's much simpler to get other kind off stuff such as movies or applications, since their scenes are so much bigger. There are plenty of release groups releasing on a daily basis, and there are a lot of FTP sites providing this material before it reaches the web. That makes it much harder for an uploader to demand certain privileges, since he/she is easily replacable. If one stops uploading, another one takes over. Everything will be posted quickly anyway.

Here, people like Sunny gets a lot of material that few others can provide. That gives him/her a lot more power. The problem is that this money making business is eventually going to kill our little community. As soon as making money becomes the primary objective, it's not sharing anymore, and profiting from other people's hard labour has always been taboo in any decent scene. It's always the sellers that get busted first, and noone feels sorry for them. I think that forcing downloaders to use inferior hosts (sometimes leaving them no other option but to pay money for premium accounts - money that will end up in the pockets of the uploader) is more selling than sharing. To me, it's like selling pirated CDs or DVDs.

octagon

Here, people like Sunny gets a lot of material that few others can provide. That gives him/her a lot more power. The problem is that this money making business is eventually going to kill our little community.

So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying its a 'supply and demand' issue. Audio-production warez is a narrower field and so the suppliers can demand more than people who give links to something like movies and TV shows. Is that it?

Here's the thing... while your answer may be correct (I'm not completely sure) the problem is this sort of "endeavor" so to speak, can't really sustain normal concepts of supply and demand -- as you say yourself, it eventually kills the community. Just consider all the recent fighting and arguing here at AudioZ and that's your proof of that. The more demands made by the uploaders the greater and the more noticeable the friction at AudioZ.

If your analysis is correct, the logical conclusion would be guys like Sunny starting to demand direct payments of fees from downloaders like you or me in exchange for links, right? Why not? Instead of a link posted you just get a paypal address or bitcoins and then hopefully an email later with a link you purchased. I've yet to see anything like that happen anywhere on the warez scene in terms of software (maybe with stolen credit card numbers and that sort of crap though), and I have little doubt that were someone to try it their profits would wind up being spent on the lawyers they would need to get them out of jail. Too many loose ends on a scheme like that, and impossible to know who it is you're selling to. Sooner or later you get punk'd.

Here's the even greater problem, though. What's going on here at AudioZ is already the rough equivalent of uploaders demanding that fee for their links anyway, right? It's just not as direct as the above example, but still the same end result; a fee for every download by one of us going to them, just through a third party. The mere addition of the 'third party' or hosting company doesn't change the end result though, which is that this whole scheme demands a system that can't possibly sustain itself on this basis. That's why things are in many ways breaking down here -- it started with people just posting links, then demand for no mirrors, then demands to have to use links to premium sites only, then demands to which hosts are acceptable and which are not -- obviously there's no real endpoint for all these demands under this type of system because the authority has transferred from the site and site owner to the uploaders--they wind up holding the cards and make demands until there's nothing left of the place because they never really cared about the place anyway, they only care about their wallet.

No matter how I analyze all of this, it just doesn't seem to lead to a conclusion that really works out. And those concerns don't even begin to address that under this system you wind up having uploaders that can and will make more money on some of this stuff than the people that actually created it. Software developers were hardly tolerant of seeing their creations shared for free... they're certainly not going to put up with it when the Sunny's of the world start making more on their software than they did.

I was going to read rico's posts, but I'll wait for the movie!

@rico88

Great post.

I think one problem is that a significant part of audio scene is not functioning as a "real" scene. For instance, let's say that an official scene release group (let's call them X) is going to release some new stuff. This is what happens:

1. X uploads the stuff to some affiliate FTP sites.
2. The couriers on those sites then, IMMEDIATELY as the stuff becomes available on the site (right after "pre"), spread it to a lot of other FTP sites. Suddenly the warez seem to be on every top site.
3. Someone downloads the stuff from one of these FTP top sites and puts it on the web for the rest of the world to download.

This is what happens when DYNAMiCS or any other "official" scene team realease something. GonBi, funtime, KRock amongst other guys with exclusive contacts get this newly released stuff and tries to upload it here as fast as possible. If funtime would refuse to upload the warez, GonBi would do it instead. If GonBi would quit, KRock would take over - and so on. This is because the warez is already spread to several top FTP sites, and it's only a matter of time before someone on AudioZ gets hold of it and uploads it here.

However, the audio scene is a little bit different. Heck, our best release team - ASSiGN - wasn't even an "official" scene team. A large chunk of the interesting releases does not originate from scene FTP sites. Let's assume that Sunny buys the stuff he releases (or works in an audio store). If he doesn't upload his stuff to the web sites, noone else will. There is no race. There are no contenders. Either he uploads it, or someone else has to buy it and upload it. If he uploaded it to FTP sites first, then funtime and the other guys would also get it. However, he doesn't. He uploads it to his favourite hosts so that he can make money. So, I think that the problem is that we have too few suppliers of audiowarez, and instead of supplying the official scene (which they could if they wanted to), they want to make money. There are a lot more suppliers of (for instance) movies, and greed does not seem to be a problem. A stronger "official" audio scene would solve a lot of problems, I think.

So, what can we do to improve our situation and achieve a sustainable community? Well, I don't know. There is no simple answer. What about a top lists? Presenting, every week, a top list of the most thanked contributors might help making contributing more prestigious - and makes sure that the downloaders (who are the ones that click the "thanks" button) are satisfied. I doubt it will help, though...

octagon

Let's assume that Sunny buys the stuff he releases (or works in an audio store).

--- Maybe I'm wrong, but this whole "concept" of Sunny buying this stuff seems to be based on some confusion. Awhile back Saint mentioned something in a thread about some of the uploaders actually buying stuff, but I think he was referring to "Discover", who seems to up a lot of small, fairly inexpensive sample packs -- the idea was that he was trying to make back the cost by sharing the stuff. Somehow that got extended to Strong Sound/Sunny as well. Fact is I've never heard anyone 'in the know' here claim that Sunny actually buys this stuff. Never heard Sunny/Strong Sound claim that either. Maybe he/she does, but I've not heard anything that would lead to that conclusion. It seems to be a story that took on a life of its own.

octagon

So, what can we do to improve our situation and achieve a sustainable community?

-- Well, it would be interesting to hear what everyone has to say about that! For me, continuing on with the "economics" theme, I would guess you would need to see the sort of event you get in the U.S. stock market every 5 to 10 years -- something happens, a world event, some disaster, whatever, that scares the crap out of everyone and then quickly shakes out all these investors who gladly sell what they have and take huge losses just to get out alive.

I think you probably need something similar in this community where something happens that shakes out the uploaders, a bust, people's refusal to download their stuff or play along with all these demands, whatever, and you gradually get a new group of people in that actually have an interest in sharing this stuff for the sake of sharing it. That's how it began, and that's probably what it needs to get back to. Big Business and politicians didn't like any of this back when it all started, but they weren't arresting many people and shutting down businesses over it, either. Every few years a website that was dedicated to file sharing would get closed down, but that was about it--more of a symbolic "hit" than anything else. No one was making money on it, it wasn't a business, and so they didn't really care a whole lot.

Hopefully a shake-out, the beginnings of which is what happened with megaupload this year, would bring back cracking teams as well, who I'm convinced don't take very well to this group of people that sought to profit from the crackers training, hard work, and a desire and willingness to share their efforts with other musicians.

The idea of all of this was to share, not to have it become a cottage industry for hosting companies and the people that think they can endlessly game the affiliate programs those businesses promote. People need to try to learn something from the whole Kim Dotcom thing. I mean, I have no doubt the U.S. will wind up losing that case, but they did destroy his business and that was their entire purpose. Big business won't tolerate little guys making money off this stuff -- when people start paying for premium hosts, and uploaders start making a kill, big business wants to know why you won't just pay them something for their work instead? And they have a point. They'll 'sort of' look the other way when its all for free and no one is profiting, but that goes out the window when the game changes, as it has nowadays.

So my guess as to what would again achieve a sustainable community is that probably you will have to see an end to most of these host-based file sharing communities based on affiliate programs, followed by a re-growth that emulates what this was in the first place. And the hosters that survived through affiliate programs already know this, which is why so many of them shut down over the past year. They recognized big business and politicians wouldn't continue to tolerate their unusual business model that held no profit for those with the real power and authority.

it's not in the poll..and none of the one proposed work where I live, which makes it an easy choice, but rghost is pretty good.