Files Network: SoundArea – Huge DDL Forum For Music Albums, Singles & Music Videos

I have been a member of SoundArea for several months but only really got the chance to check out the site yesterday. I signed up long ago as per a tip sent in by one of our readers but for some reason missed out on trying out the site after signup was complete. Since then, I’ve been getting weekly E-mails from them and these usually read something like “300 new albums were uploaded to SoundArea today”. Now 300 albums is quite a lot to be uploaded in a single day - after getting several of these, I finally decided to check what the fuss was about. For those who are confused – SoundArea is not a BitTorrent tracker – it’s a direct download link (DDL) forum. It indexes download links to full music albums, single tracks, radio shows and even music videos. The site is huge, both in terms of user base as well as content – if you download music online, this is a destination you’d not want to miss.

SoundArea is not some newbie forum that launched yesterday - it’s been online for nearly 4 years, since 2006. During these four years, SA has managed to amass a huge user base exceeding 230000 members. Needless to say, activity is pretty high on this forum with over 413000 threads currently online. For a site to attract this many number of users, it has to have something special. SA indeed looks attractive to those who seek to download music, especially as the site indexes several hundred new music album releases every day.

Both scene and non scene content (this includes user uploads added in response to the requests sections on site) is indexed on SoundArea. You can find music related to almost any genre here – in fact the main forum has ~40 sub sections, one each for a different music genre such as Rock, Pop, House, Trance, Techno, DnB, Metal, Punk, Ska and many more. In addition to music albums & single tracks, SA indexes a lot of radio shows and music videos as well. Screenshot showing part of the ‘Genres’ section on main forum can be seen below:

Something I noticed while browsing the forum was that they heavily advertise their VIP program (you need to donate to become a VIP) – for example, there is a special page on SA which lists all new music releases uploaded in a particular day. Full access to this feature is only available to VIP members. Non –VIP members can of course download latest albums – but they’ll have to discover them by browsing the main index.

As it is customary with DDL forums, SoundArea does not host any of the music files itself. These are uploaded to one click hosting sites such as HotFile and only the verified download links are shared in the forums. These are pretty reliable and I did not come across any broken links so far.

SoundAre has always been a forum that’s friendly to new users – it’s currently open for registration and anyone can create an account. In addition to open signups, SA maintains a good social presence with their official Twitter and Facebook pages.

Site Name: SoundArea (http://forum.soundarea.org)

Registration URL: http://forum.soundarea.org/index.php?app=core&module=global§ion=register

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