Should RKO start using BitTorrent for downloads?

[Chris Abbott]

This might upset a few remixers, so sorry in advance. It seems ok to have a torrent file set up to download a collection of tracks like May_05, June_05, July_05 etc, but still keep the individual track download option. I don`t want to wait a few days to download the torrent then find that I don`t like 95% of the remixes and deleting most of them. Not because the remix was crap, but maybe I never liked the original tune in the first place or it`s not my cup of tea, sorry..

It would only upset remixers if you named them as part of the group you didn't like. Otherwise all the musicians will be sitting there saying to themselves: "I'm sure he loves ME"

Chris

[FFRenzy]

AS an avid downloader i think using bittorrent for RKO would be great for "archived tracks" but not for more recent ones.

i'd suggest having the tracks of last year downloadable on a per-track basis, like now. Tracks older than those could go into packs, that are downloadable using BT. A pack per month (or quarter) would keep the number of packs managable, and wouldn't give people whe just 1 track too much overhead when downloading, IMHO.

[gibs]

I don't have the time or inclination to start faffing around with P2P stuff. I've downloaded a whole lot of stuff from RKO in my time, and have sent plenty of reviews to this very site; however, if RKO were to go solely down the BitTorrent route, I'd probably never download another track again. Of course, I have absolutely no problem with it being used as an alternate download method, but making it the only download method would, in my opinion, be a very strange decision indeed.

+1

[LMan]

i'd suggest having the tracks of last year downloadable on a per-track basis, like now. Tracks older than those could go into packs, that are downloadable using BT. A pack per month (or quarter) would keep the number of packs managable, and wouldn't give people whe just 1 track too much overhead when downloading, IMHO.

I think that would make the whole archive a lot more unattractive, especially search-wise. So it really should be an alternative only.

[Jax]

If the remixers weren't opposed, why not consider offering a DVD set of 'older' tunes? Assuming older DVD drives, two single layer discs would do it - and I'd happily pay $20 or so.

And what about usenet? Anybody can request/create a group - how about alt.binaries.mp3.c64remix?

I don't know what the bandwith usage of RKO is, but I imagine there's the odd person periodically who stumbles across the site for the first time and thinks "Oh wow, awesome - I'll run a mass download of all of the tracks"... Maybe it would be more cost effective to retain (perhaps) only the latest six months of remixes online, and once per month post the entire collection to usenet. Most *decent* usenet providers have decent retention - EasyNews (the .com, not the .de) has around 30 days retention on binaries. Other newsgroups frequently receive monthly posts of entire collections (like GBA roms, etc.) - at least this would be legal

That said, I do like the convenience of being able to search RKO to find and grab any track on there instantly

Just a couple of ideas...

(But I'd REALLY buy the DVD set )

Jax

[the_JinX]

I'd run a permanent seed..

I do have a (I think) complete RKO mirror.. but it is not all that good.. and hard to keep up to date (download new mp3's untill I get a warning that I allready have the file)
And it's a folder with WAY TOO MANY MP3's to be healthy..

So a good clean RKO mirror as torrent would be loved !!

[Jax]

When people talk about 'complete' mirrors or collections, does this include the bunch that were 'retired' from RKO a couple of years back? I'm sure I remember a news item there at one point saying that some of the older mixes were being dropped from the site...

Jax

[Vosla]

I got a lot of that 'dropped' tunes just before they went into data nirvana.
If you have a special title in mind...

[Jax]

I got a lot of that 'dropped' tunes just before they went into data nirvana.
If you have a special title in mind...

Nothing in particular - I just remember being 'oh so sad' when I realized that at one point I probably had a complete (at the time) collection, and then I busted my puter and lost the stuff... Which is why it would be cool if there was a way to get a complete collection somehow - I reckoned usenet or DVDs would be the most cost-effective.

Jax

(PS kids - remember to perform frequent backups - but I think at the time I had a naff 4x CD-writer - none of these fancy 16x DVD burners...)

[baffle]

I'm just concerned that p2p is perceived as being something illegal.

Therefore ISP's must HATE BitTorrent :)

Most ISPs couldn't care less what you are doing. It's the movie/music/software industry that cares what you do.

[Jax]

Most ISPs couldn't care less what you are doing. It's the movie/music/software industry that cares what you do.

While they might appear not to care what you do, they *do* often impose throttling on certain ports, especially with P2P networks...

Jax

[Skyy]

This would be absolutely awesome, to see them being distributed over BitTorrent. I'd love to see it happen (would make downloads alot easier) and helping them to spread around too

I vote YAY!

EDIT #1:
Of course I would help them spread around too..

[Worped]

Most ISPs couldn't care less what you are doing. It's the movie/music/software industry that cares what you do.

While they might appear not to care what you do, they *do* often impose throttling on certain ports, especially with P2P networks...

Jax

It's easy enough to change what ports your BT client uses to get around that. Enable encryption of the stream (only some clients support this - Azureus, uTorrent and some others) and you get around any throttling that may be done based on the content of the packets (rather than port number).

[trace]

Hey Jan, Maybe you could have like checkboxes beside the tracks so one can check what tracks to download and then just press a download button and all checked tracks will automaticaly be downloaded

Even a "Check all tracks" button

Don't know if that thing is hard to do, have no clue how it work

[Jan Lund Thomsen]

Hey Jan, Maybe you could have like checkboxes beside the tracks so one can check what tracks to download and then just press a download button and all checked tracks will automaticaly be downloaded

Even a "Check all tracks" button

No can do (unless someone knows a way to redirect users to a new file after the first file has been downloaded). Of course another option would be to stick all checkmarked tracks in one big zipfile and feed that to people, but somehow I don't think Baffle would like what it would do to the amount of free storage capacity on his server.