Specialized Private BitTorrent Websites - Music Trackers

April 15, 08 by sharky   31,673  views  

BT Music
DeepBassNine
DimeADozen
DnB Tracker
Elektronik
Exigo
FunkyTorrents
HHBase
IndieTorrents
iPWN Music
KrayTracker
Libble
Metal iPlay
My Bloody Twee
SatClubbing
ST Music
The Mixing Bowl
Traders Den
TranceBits
TranceBooster
TranceRoute
TranceTraffic
ViPv2
Waffles.fm
What.cd
ZombTracker
— Others —

If you’re still using Limewire to download music - the question is: WHY? BitTorrent was absolutely made for music. Releases are arranged by album - not by song title - and are always of superior bitrates and sound quality to those of their P2P counterparts. P2P networks such as Limewire’s Gnutella are easy targets of flooding and spoofing by anti-piracy groups, resulting in crippled search results and / or ‘fake’ files once downloaded. Not to mention those ‘botched home-job’ mp3 rips that quickly spread throughout users’ shared folders.

Public BitTorrent is not exempt from its share of problems, either. Anyone can arbitrarily upload a torrent that consists of badly done mp3’s, although most issues usually pertain to inferior sound quality due to ‘low bitrates’ (i.e. 128 kbit/s) commonly found in amateurish CD-rips.

Enter the private BitTorrent music tracker — the solution to ‘all things wrong with music and filesharing’! Fellow Audiophiles - here are some of the advantages of using a music-dedicated private tracker:

— FULL ALBUMS:With a private tracker, music is arranged by album, compilation and even by ‘discography’ that span across an artist’s entire musical career - all in one torrent. Music is very well-organized in easy-to-browse categories by musical genre, type,

— PRE-RELEASES:In the case of popular music, you’ll more than likely find an album far before its official store release-date. These "advance" and "promo" pirate releases come straight from the top of the music piracy pyramid.

— HQ AUDIO / LOSSLESS:Private sites offer a great selection of high-quality music; some of them only offer HQ audio and lossless music. You won’t find any 128 bitrates here!

— DVD VIDEO RELEASES:Many sites carry an unbelievable assortment of DVD (music) video for concerts, special events and other rare footage not available elsewhere.

— PROFESSIONAL RIPS:Private trackers are a finicky bunch, and normally only select torrents that are done professionally through ‘the scene’ by proper release groups. Often a release is accompanied by official "albumart" images and other extras. All music is guaranteed to be DRM-free.

— UNSURPASSED SELECTION:Put ‘em all together, and music trackers have more songs than iTunes combined. There are torrents for concerts, bootlegs, imports, CD singles, b-sides, vinyls, rarities, compilations, karaoke and soundtracks in every imaginable genre of music.

PRIVATE MUSIC TORRENT SITES

Aside from "general" non-specific private trackers, music trackers are the most numerous of the ’specialized’ private sites. Since the closure of well-known OINK.cd on that fateful day of 10/23/07, there has been an enormous explosion in music tracker startups. The selection of websites is outstanding - although many would be considered quite difficult to join. Sites listed at the top of the list are presently open to new members.

www.funkytorrents.com

— OPEN? - YES.Members: 9,000.# of Torrents: ~7,000.Features: FunkyTorrents is a good mid-sized music tracker with audio in all genres of music, including over 200 FLAC / lossless audio torrents. 20:1 (2000%) seed/leech ratio assuredly guarantees speedy downloads, and uploading by members is allowed.

Torrents Stats Categories

http://thetradersden.org

— OPEN? - YES.Members: 14,000.# of Torrents: 5,250.Features: The Traders’ Den is a lossless audio specialty tracker, with no *mp3 files. Releases include FLAC, Studio and SoundBoard audio, with a healthy heaping of music DVDs thrown in, as well. A great place for audio perfectionists!

Browse Stats

http://zombtracker.the-zomb.com

— OPEN? - YES.Members: 10,300.# of Torrents: 3,000.Features: Zomb is a very unique music tracker - there are no MP3 files (everything is either APE / FLAC / lossless audio), mixed with over 600 DVD music videos. Most stuff is hard rock and mainstream (Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, Metallica, etc.) and the torrents can be sorted by band - handy feature!

Torrents Rules Stats

http://dnbtracker.org

— OPEN? - YES.Members: 5,125.# of Torrents: ~400.Features: Drum & Bass Tracker is about sharing Drum & Bass, Breakbeat and Dubstep music. You can find mixes, podcasts, videos or freely available tracks on this site. Uploading to DnB is highly encouraged.

Browse Stats

http://hhbase.net

— OPEN? - YES.Members: ~3,000.# of Torrents: ~1,500.Features: HHBase is a Romanian/English music tracker that specializes in HipHip, R&B, Reggae, Soul/Funk/Jazz, music videos, and the like! Seeding to 1:1 is crucial to maintaining a good membership at HH, so take advantage of their freeleech offerings.

Browse Stats

http://waffles.fm

— OPEN? - NO.Members: ~40K.# of Torrents: 158,000 (total).Features: (see full review). Alongside what.cd, waffles is also a serious contender for the title of best OINK.cd replacement. With well over 150,000 torrents (40K of them being lossless-FLAC), the quality of music and selection is very high. Waffles has a large, active forum and music is well-organized and available in every known genre. Registration is presently closed, but ‘invites’ are not hard to come by. If you love music, waffles is a must-have tracker.

Torrents Categories Classes

http://what.cd

— OPEN? - NO.Members: 48,500.# of Torrents: 182,000.Features: (see full review) Along with waffles.fm, what.cd is also in the race to be billed as the next replacement for OINK.cd. What has a massive list of 180K torrents (they only had 15,000 back in 11/07), and they offer at more than 35,000 FLAC (lossless) audio torrents. What.cd is quite relaxed on the minimum ratio requirement (although it’s somewhat difficult to upload, so take advantage of freeleech promos when available), and it’s not too difficult to find an invite to get into this great music tracker. IMHO, What.cd is hands down the best music tracker around.

Torrents Categories Stats Forums

http://stmusic.org

— OPEN? - NO.Members: unknown.# of Torrents: 37,090.Features: STMusic carries over 37,000 torrents in every conceivable category of music. Releases are grouped neatly into "Scene Torrents" and "User Torrents" (do we really need to explain this?). Invites to STMusic aren’t too hard to come by - they make up over 80% of their members. They’re also handed out like to members through donating - a $5 donation gets a member 2 invites; $10 gets 5. If you can’t get into STMusic, go back to mininova.org.

Browse Categories Classes

http://www.indietorrents.com

— OPEN? - NO.Members: 7,700.# of Torrents: 1,243.Features: IndieTorrents offers the obvious -> music from independent labels and unsigned artists - big Record Label artists (see here) are not allowed (RIAA music). Seeding: With a seed/peer ratio of 8939% (9,297 to 104) it’s difficult to keep a good ratio unless you upload your own torrents. Invites: Somewhat difficult to find - their IRC channel is a good starting place.

Browse Categories Classes

Exigo

— OPEN? - Not on your life.Members: 1,300.# of Torrents: ~10,000.Features: Exigo is a lossless audio tracker, with most files being in FLAC format. Quality of torrents is high, and the selection is great in this impossible-to-get-into tracker. Uploaders are hand-picked; this means sharing ratios are difficult to maintain for the average user without a seedbox. Exigo is considered the rarest of all the private music trackers.

Stats Categories Classes

http://www.libble.com

— OPEN? - NO.Members: 7,500 / 10K.# of Torrents: 9,100 (active).Features: Libble is another startup created out of the ashes of OINK.cd, with over 11,000 torrents in more than 50 genres. Invites are quite easy to find, and 5 invites are auto-awarded to members who get promoted to Power User. There’s a "Brownie Points" system at Libble that can be used as currency for site comps - points are awarded to members who make good forums posts, upload torrents or from the ‘BrownieBots’. PU’s also get the added bonus of being able to view a special PU forum that includes the very popular invite offer/request threads for other private trackers.

Browse Categories Stats Rules

http://btmusic.eu/

— OPEN? - NO.Members: ~6,000.# of Torrents: ~13,500.Features: Pedro’s BTMusic tracker offers 60 categories of music, almost all of which is in FLAC or lossless audio format. Signups are not open; however, they have an option on their signup page for instant access if you "donate" - $25 gets you in the door with some other perks (otherwise you’ll need to be invited in order to get in, and they’re somewhat difficult to find).

Browse Classes Top 10 Cats

http://www.dimeadozen.org

— OPEN? - NO.Members: 100K.# of Torrents: ~16,000.Features: DimeaDozen / EZTorrents has been pumping out music torrents for over three years now, and a high Alexa rank backs up their popularity. With over 100K members, getting in isn’t too arduous - just keep checking back at their site; inactive accounts are deleted on a daily basis. DIME offers more than 15,500 active torrents in over 50 genres of music - there’s something for everyone.

Torrents Stats

http://www.deepbassnine.com

— OPEN? - NO.Members: no stats found.# of Torrents: 7,930.Features: DeepBassNine (DB9) is a tracker dedicated to DnB releases - Breaks, mixes, Old Skool, House/Garage, Radio. The DBN Forums are crazy busy - this is where the action really is! Registrations are never open, and invites are hard to come by & not frequently awarded to existing members. Uploading on regular torrents is not easy, but a quick browse of the "free" torrents (presently 106) is the key for ratio building.

Browse Forums

http://kraytracker.com

— OPEN? - NO.Members: ~5,500.# of Torrents: ~5000.Features: KrayTracker is a slick-looking tracker that focuses on non-RIAA (independent) music torrents in the style of Ska, Punk, Alt Rock, Metal, Techno-Electronic - among others. There’s a bonus system (aptly named "Koints") that can be swapped for upload credit, or, if you’re feeling evil, even ban a user for a 24 period (ha ha!).

Browse Home ‘Koints’ User Classes Forums

http://tracker.vipv2.org

— OPEN? - NO.Members: ~4,800.# of Torrents: ~7,300.Features: ViPv2 offers just about everything from D&B, Electronic, Hardcore, House, Indie, Industrial, Metal, OSTs, Pop, Punk, Rap/Hip-Hop, Raggae & Rock. There’s permanent freeleech for all torrents in the "Collections" and "Video" categories, so ratio-building shouldn’t be a problem. Registration is never publicly open but finding an invite to this music community isn’t too difficult - check out their IRC channel (you’ll need to register a nick).

Browse Classes / Stats

http://metal.iplay.ro

— OPEN? - NO.Members: ~4,000.# of Torrents: ~6,280.Features: Romanian Metal Torrents offers METAL — thrash, death, industrial, black, doom/sludge, etc. RMT is a very busy tracker with a ton of daily uploads. Freeleech torrents count in at around 150 - use ‘em to boost your ratio. One of the best features are the Album Packs / Discographies - there’s over 1,000 of ‘em! FLAC torrents count in at well over 400; music-vids (DVD-Rs) total over 350. Be sure to check out the detailed Top Ten categories, as well. If you’re into metal, get into this tracker!

Getting in/invites: As of June 10/08, registration is completely closed - to quote, "From this day forward we have completely closed the doors on creating new accounts on this tracker! We know that there are many users with invites left and we advice them to be patient because the invites won’t be taken back and will be usable in the future."

Home / Cats Points Top Ten Lists

http://filescene.ro (iPWN Music)

— OPEN? - NO.Members: 2,330 / 3000.# of Torrents: 626 (as of 06.21.08).Features: iPWN Music is a new music tracker without a ratio system - although users will still need to seed. There’s some decent packs (discographies, etc.) and most of the stuff is ’scene’ music, although users are heavily encouraged to upload new (and old) torrents. While iPWN is Romanian; English is the only language permitted (in the forums). Invites: As of 06.14.08, signups are now closed (no telling when they’ll reopen).

Home / Cats Points Top Ten Lists

http://tracker.shoegaze.lt (My Bloody Tracker / Twee)

— OPEN? - NO.Members: unknown.# of Torrents: ~7,000.Features: The recently relaunched & refurbished MBT/Twee is a specialized music tracker that focuses mostly on indie and small-label stuff. Users can customize the look and feel of the GUI in the user profile (very cool!). The content is of top quality - FLAC / V0 MP3s - so you won’t be finding any lame 192 bitrate files. Invites: Are awarded to Power Users by swapping in seeder bonus points (100 pts = 1 invite).

Home / Browse User Classes Seeder Bonus

Trance Music Trackers

http://themixingbowl.org

— OPEN? - YES.Members: unknown.# of Torrents: ~40,000.Features: TheMixingBowl is the marquee site for trance, techno, house and all the rest! With over 40K torrents to choose from, there’s something here for every trance lover. We couldn’ find any ’stats’ on their website - ratios are unknown but they’ve got a great Alexa rank of 36,000 so it’s a definite hit!

Torrents Category

http://satclubbing.info

— OPEN? - YES.Members: ~4,200.# of Torrents: ~1,700.Features: SatClubbing is a small tracker with 1,700 trance/techno torrents, some of which are HQ releases. They also have some decent pre-times and ’scene’ connections - lots of new releases.

Torrents Stats

http://www.trancetraffic.com

— OPEN? - NO.Members: 8,000.# of Torrents: ~18,000?.Features: First of all, are there really over 20,000 trance torrents in existence? YES! With a tiny base of just 8,000 registered members - Trance Traffic is a hot ticket that specializes in all genres of trance music (hardcore, house, ambient, techno, electro, etc.). Almost never open to new members, and invites are seldom handed out to the existing ones, lately. Not that you’ll be able to use your invites when the site is full, anyways.

Browse Categories Stats

http://trancebooster.net

— OPEN? - NO.Members: 3,000.# of Torrents: ~1,000.Features: TranceBooster is a little-known music tracker with a miniscule members list of just 3,000 users. Word is, they’ll be opening soon to let in some fresh meat to the site, so keep your eye on the signup page. Presently they’re only offering brand-new trance music releases, which explains the low torrent count (1,000), however, they’ve got some pretty amazing pre-times for the newest additions. Try to get in if fresh trance is your thing!

Browse Cats/Classes Stats

http://www.tranceroute.com

— OPEN? - NO.Members: ~5,000.# of Torrents: ~12,000.Features: Lots to say about TranceRoute! Never open directly to new signups, TR employs an open-ended ‘invite’ strategy, whereby every member gets invites by default. Just be careful who you give them to - this site may just ban you for inviting a bad member who gets banned himself. TR features a loyal group - there’s 55 seeders for every 1 leech, so good luck seeding. Categories include loads of HQ music (320 bitrates & lossless audio) in trance promos, mixes, albums, radios, and more. Use the TR ‘Energy’ points to purchase site comps.

Browse Miscellany Energy

http://tracker.elektronik.ro

— OPEN? - NO.Members: ~5,000.# of Torrents: ~5,500?.Features: Elektronik is a Romanian trance/electronic tracker with mostly English torrents in audio and DVD music video format. Highly regarded to be second-best only to TranceTraffic in terms of content, invites are difficult to find. Elektronik uses a bonus/points system which can be turned into upload GB (to help ratios) and invites (although they now cost 100K points).

Torrents Forums Seed Bonus

http://www.trancebits.com

— OPEN? - YES.Members: ~2,000.# of Torrents: 1,110.Features: TranceBits dishes up…you guessed it…Trance music! There’s a variety of phat packs available which include discographies and custom scene release packs - all of which are freeleech. Albums, singles and livesets seem to be the staple, although there’s a selection of DnB as well. We’re not sure how long this tracker will last, though - they’re asking for donations to cover server costs "otherwise we will be forced to close it".

Home / Categories Browse Packs / Freeleech

http://www.torrentech.org

Features: Electronic music torrent tracker, a forum and bittorrent tracker focused only to quality electronic music. Presently not open to new signups.

Other Notable Music Trackers

http://rockbox.psychocydd.co.uk

Features: With a name like Psychocydd, we just had to include them in our review. Plus, we love head-bangin’ thrash-metal. RPC is a public tracker with 6,200 mostly-hardcore metal torrents. Our search for Britney Spears fortunately turned up zero results.

http://softmp3.org

Features: No idea. I’ve tried to get inside this site for awhile now, but the signup page is never up. Invites are also scarce (if available).

http://metalbits.org

Features: A small private tracker with 3,600 metal torrents. With just a 3,000 user limit and another 5,000 by way of ‘invites’, MetalBits is a small community with many seeders.

http://private.pyrotorrents.org

Features: No idea. New registrations are by ‘invitation code’ only.

http://www.punktorrents.com

Features: Punk / Ska / Hardcore torrents. Site is presently not accepting new signups.

http://musictorrents.ro

Features: A Romanian music tracker with a small membership limit of just 4,000. If you can get in, keep your ratio at 1:1 or else there’s an imposed waiting time for downloads.

http://www.tapedown.com

— OPEN? - YES.Features: If you’re into Hip Hop MixTapes / DJs, TapeDown is your place.

http://www.mp3nerds.org

— OPEN? - YES.Features: A Swedish tracker with over 5,800 music torrents - 9 of them are freeleech. Woot!

http://mixes.dfx.at

— OPEN? - YES.Features: DJ Mixes & Livesets.

Add your comment

21 responses for this post

  1. 01   •   dnb'ed Says:

    good luck to torrentech with their new host.

    you mention a few electronic sites but not deepbassnine? mmm k

  2. 02   •   Anonynous Says:

    Why are you so wrong on so many things?

    Waffles’ user count is 39k, not 300k, it’s not “easy” to get into waffles and what, it’s really not hard to get into libble, and when libble started OiNK was alive and well.

    Seriously, do you check your facts at all?

  3. 03   •   Trackback :: p2pvine.com

    Specialized Private BitTorrent Websites - Music Trackers…

    If you’re still using Limewire to download music - the question is: WHY? BitTorrent was absolutely made for music. Releases are arranged by album - not by song title - and are always of superior bitrates and sound quality to those of their P2P counte…

  4. 04   •   sharky Says:

    Attn: ANONYNOUS [sic]

    Normally I don’t argue with readers’ submissions. To save myself a bunch of time, I could have just deleted the comment and moved on. People aren’t perfect; I do make mistakes and I don’t hold accounts to all of these private sites. And I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible with the information I have at hand. But this comment deserves my justification and explanation:

    1. Yes, waffles.fm user count (registered users) is perhaps 40,000 - it’s been corrected.

    2. Libble’s huge surge in popularity (before Oct/07, they were almost unheard of) came out of the death of OINK. If it weren’t for OINK going down, nobody would even know about Libble - if it continued on the same trends in traffic metrics. The screenshot below shows what happened to Libble after OINK’s death. Perhaps Oct.24 wasn’t the official start of Libble, but it certainly was it’s rebirth. The best thing that ever happened to Libble was OINK’s demise.

  5. 05   •   lordfoul Says:

    Great article as usual and nice rebuttal btw.

  6. 06   •   Anonymous Says:

    Ah, bitTorrent systems are a form of P2P just as much as any Gnutella client.
    Second of all, you neglected to mention the Pirate Bay’s new music organization system, powered by last.fm, one of the largest music based sites around. Not to mention that if a torrent doesn’t list it’s bitrate in a README or .nfo file, then it’s probably not worth downloading anyway.

  7. 07   •   pyc Says:

    The info here about Torrentech is false - the site is opet for signups - you just need the invitation code which can be fairly easy obtained through IRC channel… By the way, it has around 17000 members, specializing in electronic music torrents and discussions about it…

  8. 08   •   Peanut Says:

    Sharky:

    You’re still wrong on the Waffles users..the seeder count is not unique users.  That count represents the total number of seeders, on all torrents. The majority of the now ~40k userbase seeds more than one file, so the seed count is greater than the user count.  ;)
     
     
     

  9. 09   •   dnb'ed Says:

    cool for adding deepbassnine

    some stats

    Torrents - 9000+
    members - unknown, thought to be around 6,500
    Peers - around 44,000
    seeders - around 43,000 (yes, crazy)

    you can get an invite at db9invite@gmail.com or at least you could a week ago

  10. 010   •   Blaenk Denum Says:

    To that idiot (#06) who suggested the ever so over-rated TPB: This article is for ‘Specialized Private BitTorrent Websites’. TPB is public.

  11. 011   •   marie Says:

    does anyone have a spare waffles or what.cd  invite they would like to spare! it would be much appreciated :)
     
     
    if anyone would be nice enough my email is modsski@gmail.com

  12. 012   •   anony Says:

    just thought i’d provide an update.. what.cd has over 50,000 members… 160,000 torrents… and the minimum ratio is .15 when you’ve downloaed between 5-10 gigs, .2 when you’ve downloaded 10-20 gigs, etc all the way to .6 if you’ve downloaded over 50 gigs.

  13. 013   •   ovchik420 Says:

    So are they still giving out memeberships? Is it ever possible to get on?

  14. 014   •   sWiFT Says:

    Great Article man ;)

  15. 015   •   zero-kill Says:

    Very informative, despite the snide remarks by the others. I’ve been trying to get into what.cd and/or waffles.fm for quite some time, and since have given up. I’m making due right now with the random finds around the web on public trackers, because a lot of the stuff that is on any private tracker *can* be found else where, in the same quality, it just takes some time to find it.
    And while I’m here, I urge people to come and join the h33t community. I know you’ve seen our releases around the web, come by and say HI!

  16. 016   •   sharky Says:

    Agreed.  Proper ’scene’ music releases are found on most of the private trackers - the difference with Waffles.fm and What.cd is that they promote users to submit their own content, which vastly increases the selection of available music.  Both trackers are very difficult to keep a good sharing ratio on, unless you’re submitting your own torrents (and others are downloading them).  A seedbox doesn’t really help - music torrents are ’small’ and everyone’s just seeding anyways.

    What’s funny is that everybody wants “IN”, but they have no idea how to keep their account healthy. Unless you’re prepared to put in the extra effort, avoid these high-end music sites and just stick with a mid-sized private tracker that you’re able to easily upload to.

  17. 017   •   EliTheSerpent Says:

    Too much attention.

    If you don’t know most of this already, your ratio probably sucks and you should stick with TPB.
    Secrets are meant to be kept
     

  18. 018   •   Blaenk Denum Says:

    Testing strong emphasized link.

  19. 019   •   FLA Says:

    And here nothing about Indietorrents and MBT (my bloody tracker)?
    Both trackers are best source for indie/electronic and other non mainstream music.
    On Indietorrents is mainly new indie music. MBT dedicated to more obscure and hard to find music.
    BTW, MBT is most advanced bittorent tracker i’ve ever seen.

  20. 020   •   sharky Says:

    FLA - Thanks, they’ve been added.
    I’ve updated this article and the stats for as many as I could, and added a few new music trackers to the list.

  21. 021   •   xhtml Says:

    Free signup on SatClubbing has been closed since 1 july 2008. Invites are enabled.

Leave a Reply