The New PianoSheets Tracker: A Musician’s Paradise

June 22, 2009 by sharky

If there’s one private tracker that musicians need to be a part of, it’s PianoSheets.org. Their invite system has virtually been nonexistent for what seems like forever, without offering the opportunity for aspiring new members to get in - but that’s all about to change with their official relaunch. Since recently switching over to Gazelle after months of painstaking beta testing, PS.org is now finally ready for the masses - here’s how to find an invite.

PS.org is a tracker devoted to Piano Sheet Music, tutorials & related content. Despite its name, PianoSheets is not limited to just piano - and carries sheets, scores & transcriptions related to all instruments (piano, guitar, woodwinds, percussion, strings, even vocals, and more).

While managing to keep a low profile and out of the "invite circuit" even after 6 years of existence, PianoSheets is not a collector’s tracker - but a niche site with a solid & devoted fanbase of musicians. All old PS members were invited to the new digs, which total in at more than 7,000 users complemented with 9,200 torrents.

Finding an invite to PianoSheets — Don’t expect public registration to open anytime soon, but invites can now be requested in their IRC invite channel:

PianoSheets - New Changes & Features

The migration to Gazelle offers a tremendous improvement in how sheets can be searched, browsed and categorized. Torrent tagging makes it a snap to find what you’re looking for.

Specific composers/artists tally in at more than 1,500 - within each is its own dedicated page for related artist content. Below shows an example of the artist page for The Police:

Collections — Par for the course with many Gazelle trackers, collections (collages) are an excellent addition in that they offer graphical grouping of similarly themed content.

Request System — Bounties for fulfilling requests offer a great way to build up ratio (some bounties are 25 GB for a single filled request).

No more ‘wait times’ — Gone by the wayside are the wait times imposed on new torrents for members who happen to have a lackluster ratio. Ratio requirements are much more relaxed, and work on the incremental system in relation to total downloaded GBs.

Use an approved port — It’s worth mentioning that in order to be connectable you must use a port in the range 49162 - 65565 in your BitTorrent client. All other ports are blocked by their firewall.

Our Comments

The leaner, meaner PianoSheets.org is a must-have tracker for any musician, and continues to stand alone as the undisputed king of sheet music. Staff & devout members alike have really been increasing the torrent count as of late (PS.org listed 1,300 torrents less than 6 months ago, compared with 3,200 today). The forums are active & healthy, and the knowledge base offers some great tutorials that really complete the site. All-in-all, a great second effort from an inspired staff.

PianoSheets.org Stats (October 2010) :



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