It would not be wrong to say that What.CD is currently the best music torrent tracker around. With close to half a million torrents and a huge user base, What.CD is every BitTorrent music fan’s dream. However, getting into What is not that easy. The site has been invite only ever since it’s inception and it’s unlikely to have open signups the near future (If you are thinking of obtaining a What.CD invitation from an invite selling/trading forum, well forget it. They will hunt you down and ban your ass forever.). So how can someone new get into this great tracker? If you dedicate some of your time to research on music, music related technologies, and BitTorrent, you will easily be able to get in via the IRC interview.
For those who don’t know about What.CD, the following description should give a brief idea:
Founded in October of 2007, What.CD is a private BitTorrent tracker focusing largely on music. With its fast download speeds, well-seeded torrents, and wide selection of music files encoded in such lossless formats as FLAC, ALAC, APE, and WavPack, in addition to such lossy formats as MP3, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, and AC3, What.CD is a music-lover's paradise. For the true audiophile, What.CD offers FLAC 24-bit/96 kHz vinyl, SACD, DVD-Audio, and multi-channel DTS rips. Furthermore, What.CD offers eLearning videos, eBooks, comic books, software, and audio books.
Something that is not mentioned above is that What.CD runs on the Gazelle codebase. In fact, it was What’s crew who created this awesome BitTorrent tracker script. In addition to music torrents, What has a great comics section as well as an appz section which are both rich with fresh content.
How to get invited for free – the interview
Let me break the bad news first – the interview is somewhat difficult and you’ll have to do some reading beforehand in order to pass. Luckily, all instructions and the topics you need to research on are already clearly defined by What.CD. In fact, there is already a small ‘interview prep’ site online (http://whatinterviewprep.webs.com), which is a must read for every potential interviewee. Read it in the following order:
- How to join – Includes IRC channel details and how to connect
- Prepare for the interview – Areas and topics you need to read on
- After the interview – What you should do next, once you pass or fail the interview
Initially it may seem like a lot of work but hey, if you pass the interview you’ll have access to the best music tracker on the planet. How cool is that?
