Thursday, 02 May 2019
What about Napster?
Napster was a very popular new way to acquire MP3s. The demise of Napster has brought a lot of new blood to the MP3 hierarchy (with a lot of habits that do not necessarily work well on Usenet).
Napster has often had MP3s of distinctly inferior quality. Please listen to all MP3s before uploading to this hierarchy.
There is a very disturbing phenomenon since Napster and similar file-sharing services have become very popular. As MP3s are being traded at an astounding rate, some files of very poor quality are being shared by more and more people. Many bad MP3s with pops, clicks, blips, jingles, gaps, blasts of noise, etc. are being posted to absm.*. No matter where you get your MP3s, please listen to all files with a critical ear before reposting to absm.*. If a file is audibly flawed with objectionable artifacts, please do not post it. A high bitrate does not automatically equate to high quality.
If a track is rare, and a requester wants it anyway, be sure to be very clear in your subject title, 0/x, and/or .nfo file that the file is imperfect or encoded at a lower than usual bitrate so that subscribers can choose whether or not they wish to download the file. Just stating NMR (Not My Rip) is not sufficient warning. If you feel you must upload, please do not upload without warning potential downloaders.
