I've mentioned before that when I originally started this blog it was with the intention of posting the 30 or so rare albums that I had collected over the years and then to perhaps add one or two every few months, but scale it down. The recent Earl Slick post was actually my one thousandth post, so something's gone a bit wrong somewhere. The first couple of years were fun, learning how blogs worked and posting the albums, hitting one million visitors, starting the '...and on guitar' series, and getting to know like-minded music fans along the way. Then, a year ago I started to receive take-down notices from Warners, and before long they were coming in too fast for me to keep up with, and then on Boxing Day 2020 the blog was deleted. I wasn't sure if I wanted to carry on with it, as if I did then I couldn't post links or the same thing would just happen again, and I remembered that Paul at albumsthatshouldexist had recommended an app called Soulseek, where you could store your music and it was fairly safe from prying eyes, so I decided to give that a try. Little did I know the trouble that would cause, as despite coming up with a way that only my albums would show in a search, some people just couldn't get it to work, and despite offering to send direct links, visitors started to drop off alarmingly. That was also because instead of having to visit every page and click the link, you only had to visit the site once, make a note of the albums you wanted, and then get them from Soulseek later. In fact, one user has just set the new record for downloads in one go, with over 250 albums being requested at the same time. Hopefully he'll let me know what he thinks of them once he's listened to them. Despite the continuation of the disappointing lack of feedback I'm going to soldier on, as despite the setbacks over the past year, I do still enjoy finding or constructing these rare albums. I'd love to find a way to post links again, and I could try leaving them in the comments, but I'd want to know how the records companies find them first, and would that hide them? It must start with bots, but once you're on their radar does someone then just go through the whole blog and send hundreds of emails to Blogger? If anyone has had the same experience, or knows how they work I'd love to hear.
UPDATE
It was worth posting this request for ideas about takedowns, as Mike S mentioned something that lit a bulb in my head, and it occurred to me that Paul has only ever had a couple of takedowns, and they didn't then target him later, so I reckon it is the fact that he posts the whole link as text rather then as a hyperlink, and I think that hides it from the bots, so I'll give that a go over December and we'll see how it goes. I'll still post to Soulseek as a backup.
