Back on topic,
functionality > community.
what.cd > waffles.fm
I much prefer what.cd most of all because of it's notification system. It lets me conveniently follow bands which I wouldn't be following otherwise. It's torrent grouping is arguable on whether it's better or worse than the standardish tbdev browser waffles.fm uses. I find whatcd much superior because it groups all formats of albums together on an 'artist' page, making it easier to find stuff you're not looking for from specific artists because the torrents are not organized in a meaningless way like on waffles. They are grouped by album and by release, which makes it easy to discover less known releases such as 7inches, unreleased albums, and most of all unique compilation tracks. You will easily be able to discover non-album tracks on what.cd, because if a band has a single track on a compilation, you will get linked to the compilation via their artist page. Waffles will not show that compilation in the search results for that band. Since it organizes albums by grouping, it is efficient to snatch an entire discography at your preferred bitrate.
Waffles would be good for people who always have something specific in mind when searching, and their musical tastes are mainstream enough that you will find everything on both sites regardless of their differing torrent counts. But waffles does not excel for casual users because what.cd also gets this job done the same way.
What.cd is more in-line with Wikipedia, whereas Waffles is more of a parallel to Oink. What.cd kept innovating since it's inception, while waffles did mostly unproductive entrepreneurship, and was content being a oink.me clone with a few minor tweaks that I'm sure would have happened on oink anyways. Their biggest thing that I've noticed being "releasing" amateur 'indie' music as free leech torrents on their homepage, which is not even innovative or productive, as other trackers do the same, and the majority of the user-base gets no function from it. Based on laws of creative destruction, what.cd has gone from two years ago being equal and in close competition with waffles, to being an undisputed leader in the online music world. Waffles needs to do something fresh and creative to overcome their current stagnation. If not, the gap between these two behemoth trackers will only get larger, and the superiority of what.cd will become more and more apparent.
/end essay. comments?
(PS: The community debate on these 2 trackers is completely a matter of perspective. I am not saying that waffles.fm has a better community. I prefer the what.cd forum layout, but am not active at either)
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