Champ213

Cheap goth veekay bands is where it's at guys.

Yup, it's here. They also released at least one more livehouse single, but it seems that both songs from it (Rama:yana & 昴), will also be on the new mini album. Also, regarding -The- UnForGiveness - yes, I remember them, I was really looking forward to that project back then, but well.... it never materialized. I think I read somewhere that Kanzaki (who basically is all there is to this project) was having health issues and thus the whole thing never went anywhere. Quite sad.

I found a few more. Someone played Erasure at turntable.fm: Someone played Wintersun on turntable.fm: (Vaguedge = Zess, Bob desu = doaseternity6) Veekay problems: (then I start it = Craig/Prism; beautfiful slaughter = Jake/Spike760, Katharina = me) Biopanda is being creepy in a corner Cat loves Panda, made by Biopanda:

I got you covered! If you remember this, you get old-school creds from me. An age-old conundrum and Jake's (Spike760) aggressive marketing tactics: (I believe that "Sexorcist Percussion" was doaseternity6, not sure about Necrophilia_Bassist anymore, could have been Missa.) Weird things going on in my last.fm shoutbox. An important piece of evidence from a legendary thread ("Makeup and gay egyptians") That cat had it coming! Aggressive marketing strategies part 2 A shoutbox discussion that Varg of Burzum looks like a whaler now spawned this masterpiece: Do you remember the thread about the economic importance of tourism in Kerala? The thread is sadly lost and gone, but here's some lovely pics from it: Having fun with the word filter on April Fools Fancy new background image: That's the stuff I found on my old Photbucket account. I may find more if I look on my HD... But in the meantime, I would like to bring some attention to 2 legendary threads from olden times: Legendary ragequit No.1 (O hai itz will - a manifesto) Legendary ragequit No.2 (Max-Dash quits because of : Missa, Nes. Craig, Kai)

With a name like that what could possibly go wrong?

First live: 2014.05.12 But the only band pic on the OHP is a live pic. *is confused*

Even in a band that writes their own music it's not uncommon that there is only one main songwriter. Sometimes there's a composer and someone else, usually the vocalist, only adds the lyrics to it. So essentially, the majority of the band is playing songs that they didn't write. Surely they may add input on how to perform the songs, but they can do that as well for songs written by someone not in the band. The dangers of using ghost writers is obviously that your music may quickly become interchangeable. I guess if you have a bunch of other people write your songs, it's harder to develop your own trademark style and sound. Unless of course you happen to have the same ghost writer every time. But in the music industry it's not uncommon to just buy songs that weren't even specifically written for a specific artist. A ghost-written song can still be a kick-ass song. But if an artist relies only on songs written by someone else, they run into the danger of being little more than a glorified music box. That may not bother me so much, it's not like I'm checking the writing credits for every song I listen to, but it may bother them in the long run.

I'll try this, though I'm not sure if anyone is ever going to read this. XD

OP gets some catnip cookies for being able to find the help forum despite it being labeled "shiba inus" now though.

It's even worse since most of you change your avatar regulary, while I...... oh wait.

ACTUALLY I planned for that contingency by making screenshots of all forum names before changing them. XD

If I don't remember which Cat was which staff member this may as well happen....

The second track sounds a bit like a Midi file, lol. I kinda like it though, hoping for a bit better production in the full song, and that the vocalist won't be totally awful. XD

That seems like a decent reason to fire someone. But a petition isn't going to make him more proficient, so.... huh.

I'll be knocking at their door! I just bought a bottle of Champagne, believing there to be some nice jrock inside, but it was just some overpriced alcoholic beverage. I feel betrayed.

Because obviously a jrock band can be easily mistaken for a bottle of sparkling wine and could thus mislead those customers looking to buy some fine wine.

I just look scary from a distance, but I can easily be placated with chocolate. Seriously though I know the reposting/leeching thing is a frustrating issue for uploaders but over the years we noticed that there's only so much we can do. I will continue to look into a "press like for link"-function for this forum, because from experience it seemed like the best compromise between making leechers more "visible" and completely scaring people away. I would also recommend using a link anonymizer to force people to re-upload the releases. Not only will it make their job slightly more difficult, but it also creates mirror links and preserves the file on the net for a longer time. Because honestly, ask yourself: how often have you downloaded something from somewhere that was not the original source, but a repost, or a link you just found via google? And weren't you happy that you got it, maybe after a long search? There's two sides to every coin. I don't really have much more to add to this topic, but I will leave it open in case someone has new suggestions.

Now that's a name I haven't heard in ages....

1. I have added the "Respect the uploaders wishes"-rule to the official Download Rules and also added is as declaimer in the description of the DL forum. It has replaced the "use your own link" rule, since uploaders may or may not want that in the first place. 2. I have looked into possible anti-leech plugins for our forum software. I found this one so far. The cost would be 25$. Since Kai is already paying enough for the hosting of the site, I would probably have to pay it. It gives uploaders the option to hide their links until a user replies to the thread. Sadly there is no integration for the "Like" function so far, so it would be a source of a lot of spam. It would also put those uploaders at a disadvantage that choose to not hide their links (I for example wouldn't, I prefer comments given out of gratutide rather than force), since their topics don't get bumped up every time someone wants to download. Maybe there's a 3rd party mod for this plugin to make it work with the "like" button, I will keep looking. But for now it would just be a lot of spam and a lot of money for very little gain, so.... yeah. It's not stopping reposts, and those people that are too lazy to reply will just download from blogspots anyway. 3. Since all people with less than 5 posts are put in the "n00b" group, we could every now and then send a mass-pm to all members of this group (maybe every 6 months or so), inviting them to introduce themselves and be more active in the forum. I reckon that many n00b accounts are dead/unused anyway, but maybe a few will come out of lurking after all. As I said, we don't want to "hunt" away leechers, we want them to be active.

Okay, enough of this already. This discussion is going nowhere. 1. The fact that legit rips can be mistaken for transcodes has been covered in the Transcode FAQ. ("Many people use a programme called Spek to analyze the spectograph of the file. This can give you some valuable insights, but it's by no means 100% conclusive. I could show you several Spek images of files I ripped from original CDs according to our guidelines, that could be easily mistaken for transcodes, if you only look at the spectographs.") That's just a technical limitation we have to live with. 2. There are 2 kinds of people: those who don't care if something is a transcode and those that do. The latter one will also not want to download a bad rip. By labeling something as "Transcode" this group of people know what to avoid. If it helps anything we can use the label "Low Quality" for both transcodes AND bad rips. But seriously, you are fighting about semantics here. 3. If you want to avoid making bad rips, we have guidelines here to help you. If you upload stuff that isn't your own rip, check the quality first. If things look fishy, just say so in the description or attach a Spek image, and you won't get any trouble. We don't want to overly restrict uploading, but we want that people know what to expect when downloading something. 4. When you find a upload that looks like a transcode OR a bad rip and it doesn't say so in the description, feel free to report it. @ Magatsu: quit the whining. You are just being butthurt because a mod labeled your upload as transcode when it actually was a bad rip. It doesn't matter. If someone doesn't want to download a transcode, they certainly don't want to download a bad rip either. Those who don't mind transcodes won't mind bad rips either. Do you own the CD? Rip it again according to our guidelines. You don't? Check files you get from other sources and upload them with appropriate description. It's not rocket science. Seriously, a few months ago people were whining that we didn't do enough against low quality files, now that we try to do more, it's still not okay. *facepalm*

I said it's good enough for me. I upload music to share it with everyone else and I don't care if it's being reposted, but I would like people to re-upload it, so the links can survive longer and people can still find active links if they look for the files in 2 or 3 years. It's obviously not a solution for people who don't want any reposts at all. But if we had an easy solution for that, we would have implemented it already.

People keep conflating two different issues here: leeching and reposting. These are by no means the same and don't even have to be connected at all. A leecher is someone who takes without thanking. That doesn't mean they repost stuff. As a matter of fact I would say 95% of leechers don't. On the other hand you don't have to be a leecher to repost stuff. A reposter can be an active member, or they may at least thank you for your download. Stopping leechers can be done by making it harder to get the downloads, because leechers usually want easy access, but like I said, they would just go and take the uploads from elsewhere. We are not trying to scare away leechers. Rather we hope they wil eventually un-lurk and become active members. Stopping reposting is a lot more difficult because these people are usually a lot more determined and will not be scared away by rules or small hurdles we put up, especially if they run a blog that is dependent on new uploads. As I said, uploaders have very different demands regarding their uploads. Some want no reposts, some want credit, some explicitely don't want credit, some want to be thanked, some want to be informed, some don't want their link to be re-used, some explicitely want their link to be re-used (yes, I have seen that too). Making a rule that only covers the most extreme stance and expect uploaders to relax it every time they post something doesn't seem like a good idea to me. However we could amend the rule to something like this: "Always respect the uploaders wishes. They are the ones providing you with free music, so disrepecting their wishes may make them stop doing so, which means less music for you and everyone else. You will not only hurt yourself, but ruin it for everyone else." Ironic sidenote: the download rules date back to the very early days of the forum, when most of the stuff posted here was taken from somewhere else - as a matter of fact, the reason I signed up here was because I heard that people reposted my uploads from another forum, so I thought I may as well post them myself. XD Making a strict "no repost" as default rule would have been hypocritical, and it kinda would still be, as there is still a certain amount of stuff from other places being posted here. Also, the Megacrypter thing seems to be a good solution for people who don't want their links to be reused, which is good enough for me anyway.

There's one more thing I would like to add: there is nothing that stops the "leechers" from just getting the releases from your next blogspot to begin with. Yes, we can try to set a higher hurdle to download files here, like postcount, deleting "inactive" profiles, "post for link", etc. Those people that come here for downloads and downloads only will probably just leave and get the reposted uploads elsewhere. Because let's face it, downloading from a blogspot is much easier, faster and less hassle than from a forum. We already have higher hurdles for getting the files by requiring registration, which blogs don't. A fullblown leecher will not even bother with that. I mean, I'm pretty much a leecher for anything non-japanese. I want a new folk metal release? I google it, I find me some easily accassible source, I download it. Don't we all do that sometimes? But because of that I assume that a good number of "leechers" aren't just here for the downloads alone, but for the whole package. They want downloads, but they also want news, and lurk in the discussions, even if they don't participate themselves. Yes, it's easy to assume that people with 0 posts just come to leech, but pure leeching would be much easier elsewhere. And the harder we make it to get the downloads, the more attractive the repost places will be. "Not a big loss" some might say, and while that is partially true, a lot of our regular users here started as leechers. They came for the downloads, but stayed for the community.