LimeWire.exe

03 track 3.mp3 03 track 3(1).mp3

Hearing a song that you've downloaded playing on the radio, surprised it didn't skip in that one spot
- There was a pirated copy of "We are the Champions" by Queen circulating LimeWire and Kazaa circa 2003 that's given a generation of people mental whiplash.
  Some hooligan thought it would be funny to splice/cut/edit "of the world" at the end of the song, so it concludes with "We are the champions" (jump cut / obvious splice) "of the wooooorld."
  There's entire threads out there dedicated to finding that copy of the song because millions of people have heard it, but no one makes the connection between the hostile actors modifying those songs and sharing them on file-sharing applications versus the originals.
  There were also numerous garage band covers circulating around also - "Smells like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana was a popular one to hear in extremely low quality with someone banging spoons or something.
  Naz remembers.
  :)
  
  I accidentally downloaded a version of Du Hast back in the day that had a whole bunch of StarCraft unit quotes mixed into it that my dad fell in love with, despite never playing StarCraft. He literally likes it better than the real version lol.
  
  Oh shiiiiiit son I remember getting in an argument with my cousin about that!!
  
  What do you mean? Didn't Freddie sing it that way live? It doesn't end that way on the studio recording? Did they edit the studio version to match the live renditions?
- Hearing a song that you've downloaded playing on the radio, surprised it didn't skip in that one spot
  To this day my brain still jams in neutral when I don't hear a skip at the end of Guerilla Radio the last time Zach says "now"

toto_africa.mp3.exe
- Why did Toto load up their music with malware? I tried to listen to this just now, but all I got were 23 toolbars in my IE5!

Those don't hold a candle to Track05-UnknownArtist
- .wma or .mp3 tho?
  
  .exe

Getting so many songs by the wrong artist.
I had headstrong_linkinpark.
I could never find it on their albums.
Years later find out its by Trapt instead haha
- Fuck Trapt
  Can't think of a one hit wonder band with a more bigoted piece of shit as the front man. Dimly lite souls, the entire lot.
- I thought "Bittersweet Symphony" was an Oasis song for years thanks to Limewire.
- teenage_wasteland_the_who.mp3
  Different problem, same vibe.
- House of the Rising Sun by Pink Floyd. Turns out it was a cover ny Frijid Pink.
  
  Pretty sure the biggest victims of this were Rockapella (who apparently did every a cappella song) and Weird Al (who apparently recorded every comedy song).
  Here’s how cool Al Yankovic is though: for years he maintained a list on his website of every comedy song falsely attributed to him and all the actual artists who made them. I don’t think it’s up anymore, there can’t be much need for it these days, but Al was very cool for doing that.
  
  I think I had crimson and clover by “Pink Floyd”
- Yes. I once downloaded a Stroke9 greatest hits album, and it included the song "Story of a girl". When it came on, I thought "huh, I didn't know they did this song. Cool." Then for more than 10 years I thought it was their song.
- That Zelda song from some Flash video labeled as System of a Down.
  Crawling_(9-11_Remix).mp3 (bonus points if it's spelled Crawlin')
- Rage Against The Machine - DX Theme
- Don't Worry Be Happy by Bob Marley was the one I remember. It was not by Bob Marley at all. It was by Bobby McFarren and came out years after Marley died.
  
  Did everyone just think that the song was made by Bob Marley?
- Good tune
- Hehe : "AC/DC - Born to be wild"
  Also "AC/DC - Jailbreak" which I later found was not ACDC... And later found it actually was.
  (and yes, ac/dc because why not)
- Legend_of_Zelda_-_System_of_a_down.mp3
  
  If anyone was wondering, it was Rabbit Joint that did the Zelda cover
- Had one that was labeled as "Metallica + Trans-Siberian Orchestra". Took me years to find out it was actually Savatage
- I had Green Day - Story of a girl
  In fact if you go to https://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/green_day you will see Story of a Girl listed as #5 of their top 5 songs.
  The song is by Nine Days.

I spent way too much time back in the day updating metadata of music, renaming them, etc
- Same here. I had my iTunes library meticulously organized. Finding mp3s, downloading them, importing them, then updating the metadata.
  And now I just use Spotify lol
  
  I still do all this shit. I'll never switch to those DRM infested subscription services bullshit
- Getting those album covers looking MINT!
  
  Cant have no low res album covers
- Ugh.. the time I've spent, in general, organizing and categorizing files of various types ... Thanks
- I even typed up all the lyrics to all my songs.
  
  Oh I spent a good amount of time synchronizing lyrics too lol

Waiting 30 minutes to download a song just to hear someone’s bad Bill Clinton impression saying “my fellow Americans…”, the best of times and the worst of times
- Wait. This rings a bell, was there also an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression on this mp3?

But the file names were not as ordered and consistent like this, they were all over the place. Most of them did not even have proper meta data so I had lots of songs by "unknown artist". Creating playlists within a music player was a mess, you basically had to sort and play songs via the file system
- Track 3 by Various Artists went hard 😤🤟
  
  Is that a sequel to Track 2 by Blur?
  
  Oh God I hate iTunes for the compilations. I will have about 3 hours worth of music called Track # by ~~various artists~~ YouTube
- Meanwhile today we have songs with much saner metadata such as https://m.soundcloud.com/laughing-mantis/x5o-p-ap-4-pzx54-p-7cc-7-eicar
- I used to spend hours editing metadata for my music library on my computer but it was a constant uphill battle. My "various artists" and "unknown album" are still a mess.

Core memory unlocked! The anticipation of waiting for the download to complete and then hear something absolutely wrong was frustrating but I look back at it now and can't help but laugh.
- I had a copy of Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet that would cut out and loop back in the middle of the song. I listened to it so much I could sing along without missing a beat. Then whenever I heard the right version, it always felt weird when the song flowed through normally.
  
  Then you end up hating the "original" because you associate the downloaded one as the original and then life can never be the same again.
  Just load up Winamp and listen to it on your beige plastic speakers and forget the actual version exists.
  Ah.
  Memories.
  
  I had more than a few tracks that had AIM sign in/out door noises in the middle. Always made me laugh
- But then sometimes you download it and it's a shitty phone recording from some obscure live session
  
  Oh my god YES I completely forgot about that!!
- "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
  
  Damn it! I swear that was the correct file. Oh well, here I go downloading again! I'm sure it'll be right this time right??
- My fav was downloading a track and then every 10~ish seconds it playing 'this is Mike Jones'

Left my computer on for 2 days to download a movie and it turned out to be porn.
- Porn you could watch or a wmv file that opens a website asking for payment?
  
  Porn I could watch. However being prepubescent at the time I was shocked rather than interested.

I had that EXACT same red one. Man that rubber got really nasty feeling once a year in
- Pro tip: rub the plastic with corn starch to get rid of the sticky residue
  
  SLPT: rub me with baby oil for more sticky residue
  
  It’s in landfill now but good to know with dealing with items with old nasty rubber
  
  This is soft touch plastic. It is a plastic with rubberized coating which unfortunately starts to melt after some time. When that happens, you can just remove the coating with isopropyl alcohol and paper towel to get just regular shiny plastic.

darude_sandstorm.mp3
- scarlet_fire.mp3
- toto_africa.mp3
  
  I feel like this song didn't make a memetic comeback until like 2010+ and moreso after the cringey Weezer/Toto stuff.

please use a dash between artist and song name you uncivilized person!
- As someone who had one of these, I'm just surprised there's any consistency at all
  
  There is rock hard consistency!
  I still use mp3s today (no spotify or similar bullshit) and stick to the name convention: [ARTIST_NAME]-[SONG_NAME].mp3

Hahaha I remember using LimeWire and Bearshare.
Man I'm old.
- Did you have LimeWire on your computer? Or the family computer?
  
  No dad i didn't you're not blaming me for the viruses nice try
  
  I was like 10 so I don't remember lol
- I'll do you one better, WinMX
  
  Morpheus, Kazaa, and hands down the best - SoulSeek. It had by far the best users and collections.
- Haha, same. We had emule und kazaa 😄

You Forgot the classic
metallica_nothing_else_matters.mp3.exe
- It's on there but mislabeled as one of the others.

Nobody got time for that, everyone was happy listening to Unknown Artist - Unknown track
- Nah my metadata was on point with notes and everything.
  
  I used to fill out metadata like it was a hobby. Albums were in organized folders "artist/album/disc no. - track no. . track title.mp3". Some had release year and composer metadata lol

03 track 3.mp3

Hmm why is this song I downloaded only 35KB?
Alien_Ant_Farm-Smooth_Criminal.mp3.exe
Yeah not gonna click that
- That filename brings me back.
  
  Lmao, I remember trying to do that dance and skinning my foot on a jagged floorboard
  My friends’ parents were mad but in retrospect, sorta on them for having that janky floor

Limp Bizkit - Nookie (cookie monster version)
- I was not expecting to see this here, but here we are. And you bet your ass I'm singing it in my head.
- This brings me back to Napster days

Every radio DJ with a comedy song bit had their songs labeled as “Weird Al” on all the file sharing networks.
Such misattribute Weird Al classics like:
“My Fart Will Go On” “Pet Names for Genitalia” “Ugly Girl” And the best one…”Toast”
- I’ve actually seen Heywood Banks (the guy who actually did Toast) live. Have signed mercy somewhere. Good times.

you forgot about sex_pistols_never_mind_the_bollocks.exe
- Lemme just scan that with Spybot first to make sure....

I have my old fat iPod classic in my car now. I found an iPod Jack in the arm rest and went searching through my old tech drawer to dust it off. It's got so many bangers on it, but sometimes it just cuts out halfway through a song, waits for 30 seconds and starts the next one up, always when you're just getting into it
- Hard drive might need replacing
  
  Crazy to put a hard drive in a portable device tbh cause that shit is gonna get shaken up and jostled while spinning
- I use mine in my car as well, it still works fine though. My car is from that weird era where cars had Bluetooth connectivity with phones but it doesn't work well enough to where I can just hop in my car and have it work, so if I'm in a rush and can't set my phone up I'll just throw on one of my iPod playlists and I'm all good!

linkin_park_numb.exe

trancetrack17.mp3

You could use LimeWire to get LimeWire Pro. Good times.
- But wasn't Limewire Pro just extra viruses and ads though?
  
  You just traided the ads with all your accounts on your PC

- The one and only time I tried Limewire. I feel spoiled these days with Soulseek

I still have mine. Found it last weekend in my parents' attic. Nostalgia ultima!
- Didn't remember how generic they were until I saw this!

This, but with an iPod and YouTube to mp3 because I am a 2000s zoomer
- usually I yt-dlp and ffmpeg YouTube videos to mp3s
  
  FWIW, yt-dlp can do the ffmpeg part for you with the flags -x --audio-format mp3
  
  I freaking love FFMPEG

I had some little grey box of an mp3 player in the late 90s that held like roughly one or two smallish albums. I remember one day finding a recording of my gym teacher trying to figure out how it worked for like five minutes after unknowingly pushing the record button.
- That’s sounds pretty fancy for the late 90s
  
  It was!

I feel old
I feel so HECKING old
- How do you think I feel, I felt old when these posts were about walkmans.

- It's WAY easier what are you on about? Name a song and I'll send you a link.
  
  Yeh this is insanity, everything is literally a voice command away today. Don't know a song? Shazam on your pocket computer in the middle of the dance floor and you've got it.
  Back in the day (I mean, PRIOR TO P2P), you'd have to pray the song was uploaded to mp3 galaxy or one of the other 3 websites on the internet that just had a list of 100-200 songs, then wait 24 hours for it to download and hope the connection doesn't fail half way through so you have to start all over again.
- This was, in my opinion, the golden age of the internet. Such a wild place to explore. Now it's just megacorps controlling everything one way or another.
- Have you heard of Spotify?
  
  Or any random tracker.
  Remember when you waited 5-15 mins for a song to load just to get a incorrect tagged one
- Würfel mode on Cubic player

Mine was full of power metal. I don't know if it's just my brain deleting all the bad stuff, but it feels these times were so much better idk ..
- I'll join you in that (probable) delusion. Life was so much better, the internet was better, climate was better , TV was better.
  Of course I was younger and not as cynical and fucking tired of everything so that might explain my feelings
  
  That all predates an algorithm that wants to make you angry. The internet was better before people got good at squeezing every cent out of it.
  
  TV: mainstream streaming services didn't exist and you were forced to watch whatever was on cable, unless you were one of the early movie pirates.
  Internet: dialup, shitty DSL, poorly designed web 1.0 sites. Need I say more?
  Life: yes, you were young and not cynical yet. That's why it seemed better. As a fully grown adult in the early 2000s, things were not that different. I had the Iraq invasion, Bush, and the "war on terrorism" to be angry about.
  You got me on the climate thing though.
- You're not wrong, they were better times for sure. The wild west of the internet days full of questionable clicks to sites and downloads. We were so young. We had so much to learn!
  
  I wouldn't want to go back to that internet.
  Today it has some problems, but nothing which can't be solved, before you had to deal with too much bullshit

I had one of these in college. It was a good little player. Reasonably inexpensive. One end was a cap that came off and was a full size USB, so that you didn't need to carry around cables.
I'm not going to tell you how long it took me to figure out that the hold switch made the storage mount as read only when plugged into a computer.
- I went through a few over the years. Some were this exact brand (in blue or black). Some were basically the same but more square. At first they had built-in storage, but later ones just had a micro SD slot. Some used a AAA battery, some rechargeable. Some had an FM radio tuner built-in.
  They were all great. My smartphones ended up replacing them eventually, but it was really nice to have physical buttons. And, in college in the 2010's, it was nice to have a USB drive on me at all times.

The other day while starting pack we came across my old iPod mini, with the blue aluminum shell. Guess who's getting a flash drive and new firmware!?
- Oh I still have my pink one, never through about flashing it! This is exciting!

- Seizure warning, if anyone's using an app or tool that looks for these

Arm the nugget!

I have one almost exactly like that (different brand, but looks exactly the same besides that). Would anyone know how to recover data from it (some text files, and potentially some recordings made with the built-in microphone)? Whenever I plug it into a computer the loading screen comes up on the player but nothing happens (computer can't mount it), and turning it on also just gets me to the loading screen where it stays without moving forward.
- The memory is corrupt, that's why it won't load.
  
  Do you mean volatile or non-volatile memory (ie. is it theoretically possible to recover the data)?
- I always have good luck with gparted, testdisk on Linux
  
  I don't think it even gets assigned a file in /dev.
  
  [26850.924530] usb 2-3.2: new high-speed USB device number 10 using xhci_hcd [26851.024961] usb 2-3.2: New USB device found, idVendor=10d6, idProduct=10d6, bcdDevice= 1.00 [26851.024976] usb 2-3.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
  This is all that dmesg displays when I connect it to my computer.
- Might have a file system your OS can't handle, there was some proprietary shenanigans back then or its memory is just toast.
  
  Those are usually just FATs. The left cap pops off and exposes a USB port. The player itself shows up as a thumb drive.

My favorite thing to download from Limewire was Limewire Pro.
- Aaand you just lost your accounts

loreen_euphoria (1).mp3

heading out after school to the internet café to play Counter Strike with your friends near the mall.

I'd download files that were called like cool.house.music2003.mp3. Found some legitimately good tracks that I could never identify that way.
- track id????

The image tells me the owner was not American...
- Why?

Oh yeah this definitely sounds like Wierd Al
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=_fUEzBt89U4&
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

The holy nugget

hipsdontlie.mp3

ah the good old days, where instead of recommendation algorithms you had some guy deliberately adding more popular artists' names to songs so you'd accidentally download them and broaden your horizons a bit
shoutouts to whoever mislabeled Chylinska as Rammstein in 2001 btw, you made me like 5% cooler
- That’s how Soulja Boy boosted his numbers. He would upload his own songs and rename them to popular ones lol

LimeWire was terrible. Quickly switched to Soulseek and have been using it ever since. Actually Nicotine+, but that's besides the point.
- Kazaa was my go-to back in the day.
  
  I was old enough to have used Napster before it was terrible.
- Soulseek was Amazing. What was cool is you could chat with people. I met a "Girl" from Israël and she made me discover a lot of cool rap bands like CunninLynguists. It was fun.

Don'twaste, yourtime, onme, yeralready, the voice inside maiyead
- WHEREAREYEEEEW

By the time I got an Mp3 player like this, the second generation iPod released soon after. 😬
- It's better than ipad anyway. You just stick it in to load music onto it, you don't need iTunes or a cable, and it's nore compact too. I miss those simple devices.
  
  I remember way back in the day helping a friend back up their stuff. I never had used an iPod before and plugged theirs in to their computer expecting to be able to just use the file browser to get to it, like common sense would dictate. That's the day I discovered Apple doesn't really do common sense.
  
  You can still buy 'em on AliExpress for example (I got the RUIZU MP3 player without a screen for 20€). If you are a sound nerd or hifi enthusiast you can get one that connects to a Bluetooth DAC (like the fiio for example) for super sound.
  It's kind of quiet in a way to just push play and knowing exactly what you'll get (no hiccups, no commercials, no "you maybe'll like this new song Spotify stuff"...).

Audio Satellite was the best.
- Wow forgot that existed. Amazing.

florida_whistle.mp3

Napster for me, and I downloaded the entire Metallica anthology after Lars Ulrich said what he did.

The good ol' days
- .MP3
  Ftfy

awww yiss
I remember having a chinese-branded one that could fit abooooout thirty mp3s on it. It had one of those buttons that you could click in all four directions or in the center, but to charge or change the songs on it you needed a really hard to find cable.