Zippyshare Has Shut Down ⇥ torrentfreak.com

Andy Maxwell, writing at TorrentFreak in March:

After almost 17 years online, file-hosting veteran Zippyshare will shut down at the end of the month. Founded in 2006, Zippyshare was known for its free, no-nonsense, no-frills approach to storing files online. Having changed very little over the years, Zippyshare’s operators say the platform is now a dinosaur that costs too much to run in a world where ad-blocking is widespread.

I missed this news when it was announced, but I wanted to call it out. Zippyshare joins a long line of file hosting services — most notably Megaupload and RapidShare — which have either shut down willingly or been forced to do so by law enforcement. All of these services have been historically used by, among others, plenty of old-school music blogs. There are many reasons to object to file sharing, but I do think there is something special about that era of online publishing.

These abandoned blogs — many full of rare albums usually unavailable without carefully watching the Discogs marketplace for an expensive vinyl record — now have a series of worthless links at the bottom of each post. It somehow feels appropriate, as though these records will always elude all but the most dedicated collector.