What.cd shuts down

Music torrent and invite-only community What.cd has shut down. The site was raided yesterday and 12 servers were seized. OVH France hosted its massive library and while the site was regarded as unsafe for pirates, the What.CD admins trusted the host. As one commenter on The Verge’s article says: “OVH started terminating seedbox accounts in 2010, and were generally regarded as untrustworthy by BitTorrent enthusiasts ever since.”

What.cd had very strict rules regarding the quality of the music shared. While the site offered an extended library, unlike any other music service, it wasn’t a major source for leaks. This was often due to leaks being transcoded and rarely made it onto the site.

It’s worth mentioning that an alternative to What.cd might pop-up in the not so distant future. What.CD and Waffles.fm were created as a reaction to OiNK shutting down in 2007. OiNK was the original invite-only music torrent site with a music library spanning both commercial and rare music.