A kind commenter just pointed out to me that Zippyshare has made an announcement that they're going to shut down at the end of the month:
File-sharing site Zippyshare shutting down after 17 years (bleepingcomputer.com)
That sucks for me. I'm definitely going to find an alternate way to share files. I don't know if everything will be ready by the end of the month though (only ten days from now as I write this). So you might watn to grab what you can while all the links are still working. But I'm going to try my best to switch to a new file sharing method, hopefully before all the links die.
In a way, perhaps this is a good thing. There have been lots of complaints about ZippyShare's flaws (such as pop-up ads and it not working in some countries), but I've been lazy about switching. Now, I have no choice. The thing is, I don't know what to switch to. I'm open to suggestions. The great thing about ZippyShare for me has been that it's totally free. On the downside, links die when they're not used in thirty days, so I've had to constantly fix broken links. What I'd like it something free, or close to free, that doesn't have the dying links problem.
Please let me know what you think I should do! Thanks.
I have used Mega.nz for many years with no real problems. It's free until you upload 20 gb of files. But there are many other options.
ReplyDeleteEach album I post is roughly 100 mb or more (200 mb would be a big one), and I've posted about 2,000 of them. And that's growing all the time. So how much would I pay with Mega?
DeleteI believe it is about $10US per month for 2T.
DeleteMany blogs use Mega.nz
ReplyDelete100x2000=200,000
ReplyDelete200gb or 0.2 terrabytes
Dropbox £10 UK pound month £120 UK pounds per year
2,000 gigabyte access
So five times your current total
So appx 10,000 albums
All very rough estmates
You can download it for free with a free 2GB limit.
Or you could go purely Soulseek. ( But then you've got limited time slot windows when you go online).
I still can't find all your albums on that platform? But my android application that accesses it is waaay glitchy but it's the only one out there! So it's my problemo.
The way things are going (I'm thinking T0Um P33tty past issues) and if the costs are a concern you could set up a patreon. Say if costs are $150 a year that's 150 people with a yearly subscription of $1
Realistically 25 people at $6 a year.
Or a one year Gofundme drive. That way people are helping you with your computer costs not buying certain 'units' from you. One is lawful I think the other is not!
You could go torrent the files on a current platform. You then are only, still providing links.
Anyhow.
Let's hope more people critique our suggestions. Not criticise! One is positive and informative.
I'm done with negative comments
ReplyDeleteDropbox has a simple user interface of just folders. Each can be locked off, made private to some invisible to others but all in one classic folder style layout.( I'm a visual person so that appeals to me!)
So the content creator can see everything in one spot.
I like simplicity Mega just over complicates simple tasks. Especially on Android. Maybe I'm oldskool cool! Or past it (damn too many drop-down menu's hidden away setting clunkiness). All this depends on how we acces information according to our unique brains.
What's your learning style?
visual
Audio
Reading
Writing
Kinesthetic
Maybe Google the VARRK learning styles to understand more about how we all learn and access information.
Thanks for the info and advice. One of the things I most liked about Zippyshare is that it would give you lots of data about each zip, especially how many people were downloading each one. That would help me know which artists were getting a good reaction and which ones weren't. I don't know of other services that do that. Do you?
DeleteI don't mind paying a little bit, as long as it doesn't spiral out of control. For instance, some service charging based on the amount of traffic you have, so if a lot of people are downloading things, it ends up costing more. I definitely don't want to go to SoulseekQT only. The number of people who find my stuff that way seems to be just a small trickle compared to the number who find it through this blog.
Mediafire and Mega seem the best alternatives....THX for the good job,the pleasure u spread and i wish u good luck
DeleteUse Sendspace. Works pretty good
ReplyDeleteEither Mediafire or Dropbox for me. Mega is okay, but I prefer the others.
ReplyDeleteMega, Krakenfiles, Mediafire are all good. I (and I'm sure many others) would gladly subscribe if costs go up.
ReplyDeleteWorkupload is what I use
ReplyDeleteI use that as well as Sendspace. Mediafire blocked me, avoid them, Mega is ok.
DeleteMediafire or Sendspace seem to be the fastest and most reliable. and Rapid and Turbo work quite well.
ReplyDeleteApparently zippy will shut down on april 1st? It could just be an elaborate april fools day hoax, you never know. I have accounts with rapidgator and turbobit, they don't cost a lot over the year. If you sign up to mega you get 50gb free space. Kraken and mediafire are mostly ok, but the mediafire bots look for certain artists and block downloads, so it's best to scramble the file names. Best of luck with it all. Cheers, Andy
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. Looks like I should avoid Mediafire, cos I don't want things to be blocked.
DeleteI'm sorry to hear this. Nothing lasts forever
ReplyDeleteWhatever you choose, I would be glad to contribute to the cost...
ReplyDeleteI also am happy to contribute to the cost.
ReplyDeleteI think Mediafire would be the closest thing to Zippy. Links last a long time too. I'd be happy to contribute what I can if you do a pay one too. Maybe Google Drive is an option.
ReplyDeleteHi Paul, Please could you email me, I've had an idea that might help us all. andy.thorley@live.co.uk
ReplyDeleteMega.nz for sure
ReplyDeleteI visit another one-a-day bootleg blog, they use Krakenfiles. Free (for me, quick, no ads.) Here's a Grateful Dad example:
ReplyDeletehttps://krakenfiles.com/view/9o7fuPHXMz/file.html
Perhaps the band name is hidden to avoid takedowns.
Also, Paul, yours is a unique blog, and valuable to people who enjoy "deep tracks" like I do.
ReplyDeleteIf you did a CHEAP yearly ask, like $5, $10 or $20, I bet almost everyone here would throw you a donation.
Both Mega and Mediafire are fast, and without ad interruptions or virus attempts.
ReplyDeleteI agree that most who DL from your site would be happy to "Buy me a coffee," or respond to a gofundme.
Try soulseek, a great way to share and promote music.
ReplyDeleteShame that Zippy's going away, it was fairly reliable so far
ReplyDeleteI only used zippyshare on my BLOG for sample mp3 listens. I use mainly Sendspace & Workupload. Sometimes Uploadgig or Solidfiles (which seems to go down alot).
ReplyDeleteI had the same issue when my Yandex subscription died, so I went with Mega. £40 GBP for 400gb for a year is actually cheaper than Yandex, which at the time I thought was the cheapest around, but I do miss the data, as I have no idea if any files are being downloaded.
ReplyDeleteI too would help towards your costs Paul.
ReplyDeletePaul,
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as a dedicated downloader you should check out Bayfiles. Its one of the options provided on 'Azor's Music' blog. It's free, No Captcha, No Timers, No adverts as far as I can see, 20GB filesize per file and it allows truly concurrent downloading (I've downloaded 20 files or more at once before) with no download speed throttling and no defined retention times for files (albeit I assume they may remove files when they need space). And you can upload 5000 files / 100GB per day or 500 files or 50GB per hour.
What it doesn't give you by the looks of it is a registered account account or lots of statistics.
https://bayfiles.com/faq
It seems to be twinned with another almost identical site called Openload which is equally good for downloading:
https://openload.cc/faq
They are worth a look
Another truly concurrent downloads site to look at is upload.ee which the "Rien que des vinyls" blog has been using for a few years. That blog posts similar numbers of posts per week to you. Again it allows true concurrent downloads.Unlike the previous two it does offer registered accounts and an 'overview' of the files in the account
https://www.upload.ee/faq.html
Purely from a downloaders point of view the above three stand out
As for other better known sites:
Mega: Reliable provider, no time limits on file retention and I use my free account heavily. However has reduced its free accounts space from 50GB to 20GB. That said its premium offerings are reasonably priced (starting around $60 a year). I use Mega for sharing links but only on a limited non blog basis and I delete links after a few weeks.
Thing is its designed to be a different sort of downloading vehicle because I do not download any mega links but transfer the files into my mega account and then batch download them 5GB at a time using the mega client (mega limits the amount each free account ip address can download over I think a 12 hour period ). Using batch downloads Mega will use all the bandwidth you can offer it. No limits. Not sure about individual download speeds. As I have an account and the client I simply don't download links as I do from other file storage sites.
The max free batch download in a 12 hour period is 5GB and that limit can differ dependent on the country you are downloading from. Some countries can only download 2GB. To get the best out of Mega you need to be using it a lot (and liberally use a VPN) and that might not suit the casual downloader.
Wetransfer - LImited time retention on files albeit great download speeds
Mediafire - increasing filtering and censorship blocking downloads
Krakenfiles - Recently installed a paywall (ending true concurrent downloads for free users) and only allows 2 downloads generally at any time now for free users. Still can be unreliable with downloads failing, doesn't queue downloads reliably and indications of bandwidth throttling at times of heavy use.
Imagenetz - Single downloads but does support the queueing of downloads (you click on the links and they download one after another) fairly reliably and has decent download speeds
Turbobit - Captcha, Timers, No free concurrent downloads amongst the worst free sites on the net for downloaders.
Rapidgator - Interminable timers that do everything to hinder free multiple downloads. Unless you switch VPN servers after each download you'll get no more than three or four free downloads out of them a day. All sorts of other limitations on free use too. Worse in their way than Turbobit. It's a shame because their premium service is excellent.
I do not download from others mentioned enough to really judge.
Of the more popular sharing sites Mega would be my preferred site but the three lesser ones I mentioned first are the best for downloading in my opinion.
Wow, Manny, you are a fountain of info on this topic. Thanks. Can you give me your email so I can email you for more questions? Or mine is thompson22 @ runbox.com. One thing I'm looking for, as mentioned above, is getting some data, esp. getting to know how many people are downloading any given file. And I'm trying to avoid sites where files are automatically deleted after a certain number of inactive days. If I could find a sight that does both of those things, I don't mind paying a small amount every year.
DeleteAnd I forgot to mention Imagenetz and Krakenfiles have this weird glitch that if you start downloading a file from it seems to block the loading of any other of their download pages until its finished so its best to load all their download pages that you want first before you start clicking on download links. Bizarre....
ReplyDeleteYou can sign up any number of mega accounts, each under a different pseudonym. Just get a valid gmail address for each. Mega doesn't know or care. Each account gives you 50GB free. Downloaders do not know that the links are held under different mega accounts. (I'll probably be banned from Mega now I've told you this!)
ReplyDeleteI've never liked Zippyshare much - you often have to click on it several times to get the download to start. In the meantime it is opening unwanted new windows - some of them NSFW, which can be embarrassing - and keeping your antivirus busy fending off all the malware it tries to install on your system. Mega is much better, with a clean one-click interface. Mediafire is also OK - strangely, I discovered recently that after it bars you from downloading something, one or two further clicks will often get the download to start anyway. From the free downloader's viewpoint, the likes of Rapidgator and Turbobit are annoying because you have to do a lot of clicking and waiting, and they have daily download limits.
ReplyDeleteMega.nz or drop download
ReplyDeleteI site I download from occasionally called Internet Archive appears to offer free uploads and I don't see anything around charges or caps. Found it through a blog called Doom & Gloom from the Tomb (which might interest you as there is crossover with some of the artists you post). Here is a link for one of this week's posts https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/archivehttps://archive.org/details/robynhitchcock2023-03-21.flac16. This link will take you to this download on Internet Archive https://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/archive so you can dink around and check it out. Only down side is the downloads are a bit slow. Like I said, I don't upload so hopefully not sending you down a rabbit hole here :-). Love what you do and will be visiting often to see what you can work out. Thanks for all you do.
ReplyDelete