FileShareFreak [mirror]: Featured Music Tracker

May 15, 2008 by sharky

After the demise of OiNK.cd, 180,000 music-lovers were saddened and left in turmoil - but not for very long. One thing’s certain: There are more choices for music than ever before - while some will attest that none come close to offering what OiNK did; others will say that the BitTorrent music scene is only now beginning to blossom. Numerous contenders that have risen out of the ashes, and two stand apart from the rest - What.cd and Waffles.fm. Both bring in huge traffic and have almost identical Alexa rankings (12,479 for Waffles and 12,660 for What.cd).

Whether Waffles is dubbed the new king of music is up for debate - BitTorrent users can’t seem to agree. Personally speaking, Waffles is by far the most aesthetically pleasing music tracker, and backs it up with an enormous selection & rich features. For those of you who’ve not seen inside Waffles.fm - let this be all the more reason to find an invitation. This is how music should be done!

Under the Hood at Waffles.fm - Statistics

A tracker is only as good as its community and members - and Waffles delivers on all fronts. With over 140,000 different torrents, there’s something for everyone in every imaginable genre of music.

Waffles is growing fast - the torrent count has risen 40% since Jan. ‘08. Registered members now sit at just over 36,000 (this was less than 26,000 in January). Combine this with 544,400 seeding torrents and this means each user is seeding 15 torrents on average - a very impressive show of loyalty! Download speeds are zippy, indeed - although the same cannot be said for uploading. You’ll either need a high-powered seedbox and some crafty techniques, or start upping your own torrents to keep the account.

Getting an Invite to Waffles

It’s no secret - Waffles is a hard tracker to get into; considerably more difficult than What.cd. Invites aren’t honored that often - when the site is full, existing members can’t use the ones they have. There’s been recent mention that they’re going to open the doors to an additional 15,000 members (likely through invites only) so keep an eye on those torrent giveaway forums in the future - there’ll be a deluge of invites handed out freely.

Browsing Through…

With over 80 categories of music, surely you’ll find what you’re looking for. Torrents are easily sorted and bookmarked; all have proper tags for quick reference (1990/MP3/256).

Advanced Searching

One of the reasons why Waffles is our favourite tracker is the ability to filter the results through the advanced searching feature. Albums can be sorted by artist, year, quality (format and bitrate), genre, and everything else. Which comes in handy with 140K torrents.

Lossless / HQ Audio

Waffles touts a very impressive selection of lossless audio - with over 37,000 torrents in FLAC format alone. That’s an astounding one-quarter of their torrents! Aside from 100K MP3 torrents, other formats include AFAC, OGG, DTS, AAC and WV (WavPack). Members can easily filter only these results by using the advanced search - here’s some of the results:

FLAC	OGG	DTS	ALAC

Rather just see what’s popular? Try their Top Ten lists instead. Here you’ll find torrents sorted into all kinds of categories - most downloaded, most active, best seeded and most snatched:

Waffles - Extras

eBooks & Audiobooks - There’s a decent selection of eBooks & audiobooks on Waffles as well, in both the Fiction and Non-Fiction categories. Not to mention comic books.

Detailed Album Info - A wealth of information regarding each of its torrents is listed in the ‘details’ page for each release. Track listings are displayed, along with quality, bitrate, format and on some occasions the album art:

Torrent Info 1	Torrent Info 2

Requests - Requests can be made through Waffles’ request feature - and it’s a very busy place, indeed. Members can use it to get an idea for what others are looking for (by filling a popular request, you’ll have a better chance of gaining ratio through uploading).

Uploading - Highly encouraged on Waffles, especially when filling requests - but follow the rules or it’ll get nuked and you’ll receive a warning for a bad release.

Requests	Upload

Forums - Lots of action here! The Waffles forums include some excellent tutorials (over 100 in all) pertaining mostly to audio ripping / audio appz.

Forums	Tutorials

User Classes

By default, new users are able to upload torrents. Climbing up the user class ladder is fairly simple - keep a sharing ratio over 1.05 and upload more than 25GB.

Waffles Rules

Be aware of the rules, especially if you wish to upload your own torrents. Most BitTorrent clients are on the "allow" list, but it should be taken into consideration before you begin: