[HN Gopher] Keygen Library Player (4504 tracks)
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       Keygen Library Player (4504 tracks)
        
       Author : BenFeldman1930
       Score  : 137 points
       Date   : 2023-06-18 07:42 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (cable.ayra.ch)
 (TXT) w3m dump (cable.ayra.ch)
        
       | codetrotter wrote:
       | I remember FFF keygens and NFO files. Their name meant "Fighting
       | For Fun" :D
        
       | matheusmoreira wrote:
       | Mega Man themes!!!
       | 
       | https://cable.ayra.ch/webxmp/#1884
       | 
       | I can't believe it!
        
       | jdangu wrote:
       | As someone who authored some keygen templates in this list (circa
       | 1999-2000), this music was not commonly properly sourced. Chip
       | music had already turned classic and we would pick what we liked.
       | Providing credits was best effort. At some point we were very
       | happy to collaborate with a chip music artist who made a tune
       | just for our template, this was more the exception than the norm.
       | tl;dr: this archive doesn't carry proper credits to original
       | artists. The demo scene is where it's at.
        
       | Mizza wrote:
       | Dang, this is awesome. Now I'm going to have to spend an hour
       | trying to find the tune that's been stuck in my head since 2004.
        
         | wingerlang wrote:
         | I also had one in mind, which I found almost instantly.
         | https://cable.ayra.ch/webxmp/#1735
        
       | doublerabbit wrote:
       | Other resources:
       | 
       | http://keygenmusic.org -- A hugh library of keygen music
       | 
       | http://modarchive.org -- Site for Tracker Musicians
        
       | nazgulsenpai wrote:
       | Ah, how I recall in the late 90s browsing through the seedy sites
       | looking for the specific version keygen/crack I needed... back
       | before ad-blockers and those websites were like 10% content, 90%
       | porn ads, on dial-up. These all sound so nostalgic, even if I
       | can't recall which specific tunes I heard back then.
       | 
       | This is great. Thank you.
        
       | daneel_w wrote:
       | Nitpicky factoid: the correct name for this type of music, as
       | used in the scene where it originates from, is CHIP MUSIC or
       | CHIPTUNES.
        
         | nonethewiser wrote:
         | Its not mutually exclusive. These chiptunes cone from key
         | generators which is why its called keygen music.
         | 
         | > Illegitimate key generators are typically distributed by
         | software crackers in the warez scene and demoscene. These
         | keygens often play "Keygen music", which may include the genres
         | dubstep or chiptunes[1] in the background and have artistic
         | user interfaces.
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keygen
         | 
         | More details:
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/66nvia/w...
        
           | daneel_w wrote:
           | Some of them come from there, a few of them even exclusively
           | composed for this or that cracking group to use in their key
           | generators, but the vast majority of them were just taken
           | from prior intros (demos) and crack intros from a time before
           | software began commonly using calculable serial keys. The
           | history is not the least unknown to me, as I grew up in both
           | the demo scene and the "elite/piracy" scene of the Commodore
           | 64 and the Commodore Amiga - where all of this began.
        
         | kortex wrote:
         | Chip music / chiptune specifically to music produced on/for
         | sound chips, or produced using tracker software which was
         | commonly used to produce this kind of music.
         | 
         | "8-bit" is also often used to refer to the genre of chiptune,
         | even though much of the music is produced for higher bit depth
         | systems.
         | 
         | Many keygen tunes are chiptunes, produced on trackers, but many
         | are not. Some are straight-up DnB, techno, or trance, not
         | remotely chiptune. E.g. Here's a track from downthread which
         | would be considered rave/ old skool / breakebeat hardcore or
         | just "hardcore" (not to be confused with like a dozen other
         | genres called "old skool" or "hardcore" (it's a very ineffable
         | genre from a fairly narrow time period, from a fairly
         | underground at the time subculture, who released via physically
         | unstable "dubplates" that haven't survived well through digital
         | archiving)).
         | 
         | https://cable.ayra.ch/webxmp/#835
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakbeat_hardcore
         | 
         | It's almost like language is fluid and descriptive, not
         | proscriptive.
        
           | daneel_w wrote:
           | It was never really about the genre per se, though there is a
           | certain artistic similarity that can be gleaned, similar to
           | how e.g. Japanese game music of the early 90s has a certain
           | red thread to it. It was always about the nature of the
           | instruments used in the tracker music: a notable use of
           | simple looped waveforms and minimal samples, instead of
           | extended samples of a real or synthesized instrument, and
           | often a desire to squeeze the file size of these tracker
           | modules down to a minimum to the point where it became a bit
           | of a craft to some. People (like me) who spent a lot of time
           | in the scene when this era of computer music came into
           | existence have a specific and widely shared opinion about
           | what is a chiptune and what isn't.
        
         | snowram wrote:
         | Chiptune does have its subgenres. Keygen chiptune usually have
         | a very distinct style with a lot of fast arpeggios and mainly
         | pulse waves instruments with no attack or delay.
        
         | tom_ wrote:
         | Depends on the tune... some of these sound more like mods or
         | xms, made up of samples rather than synthesized notes (the
         | synthesized nature being one of the distinguishing
         | characteristics of the chip tune).
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | Nitpickier:
         | 
         | Fairly certain the music itself strongly predates these terms.
         | I'm reminded of when the phrase "mash-up" got popular; though
         | hip-hop DJ's doing "blends" had been happening for years
         | before.
        
         | vardump wrote:
         | Also these tunes are XM modules. XM is a popular tracker.
         | Trackers are type of music making software pioneered by
         | Soundtracker on Amiga.
         | 
         | I wouldn't be surprised if many of these tunes have just been
         | ripped from somewhere else and not actually made by keygen
         | crackers themselves.
        
           | matheusmoreira wrote:
           | Music trackers are so cool. Instead of recorded audio, they
           | produce modules which are essentially programs that the
           | tracker software executes to reproduce the sound. You can
           | even see the unmixed waveforms of each instrument being
           | generated in real time. It's just so cool to watch.
           | 
           | https://youtu.be/eclMFa0mD1c
        
           | bananaboy wrote:
           | To be even nitpickier the tracker that makes XM files is
           | called FastTracker2 ;)
        
             | vardump wrote:
             | Oh, you're absolutely right. :-)
        
           | vintermann wrote:
           | Most of them are, but the reason why (in the words of
           | YouTuber Ahoy) piracy has such an awesome soundtrack, is that
           | the cracking groups grew out of the Commodore scene.
        
             | underlipton wrote:
             | Yup. I learned about it way after the fact, but you have
             | the cracker scene, which crosses over with tracker
             | enthusiasts and produces demoscene in the 80s/90s.
             | Demoscene crosses over with a lot of early PC game dev,
             | which loops us back around to crackers. The next gen picks
             | up the echoes of this stuff through keygens and romhacks,
             | and we eventually get stuff like Barkley Gaiden (whose
             | theme song remixed the Space Jam theme with a mod from a
             | tracker composer who went on to cofound Swedish House
             | Mafia) and Undertale (which is the culmination of a
             | stupidly-interesting chain of chiptune/indie game dev
             | influences).
        
               | amiga386 wrote:
               | > a tracker composer who went on to cofound Swedish House
               | Mafia
               | 
               | Axwell aka Quazar:
               | 
               | * http://ftp.modland.com/pub/modules/Protracker/Quazar/
               | 
               | * http://ftp.modland.com/pub/modules/Fasttracker%202/Quaz
               | ar/
        
               | jstarfish wrote:
               | Dubmood managed to get a song onto the Hotline Miami
               | soundtrack ("Richard").
        
           | amiga386 wrote:
           | Most of them are. The first two things this site played at me
           | was the fruit machine music from Superfrog (Amiga, 1993,
           | Allister Brimble) [0], then the DisIsSid#3 intro (Amiga,
           | 1996, Manfred Linzer) [1]
           | 
           | That's not to say that crackers and musicians don't mingle.
           | While there was not only music made for games, demos, intros,
           | musicdisks and other demoscene productions, there was
           | certainly a lot of chiptunes commissioned for or widely
           | spread by cracktros, with the musicians' support
           | 
           | In one particularly interesting case, Mark Knight [2] got a
           | permanent job as a musician for the game company Mindscape,
           | and he could hear his own music, [3] that he'd given to Melon
           | Dezign and had been used by their cracking friends Crystal
           | for the cracktro [4][5] to their crack of Mindscape's game,
           | Moonstone [6]
           | 
           | > I received a call from Richard Leinfellner at Mindscape
           | offering me some freelance work, converting the Wing
           | Commander music for the Amiga. I snapped it up and when
           | (almost) completed, he offered me a full-time position as in-
           | house composer.
           | 
           | > It could have been the shortest career in history when,
           | during the first week, I heard one of my chiptunes playing in
           | the production office. Mindscape had just released Moonstone,
           | and had downloaded a copy from a bbs. I stuck my head around
           | to see why they were playing my tune, and quickly saw that
           | the crack intro introducing Moonstone was playing. I silently
           | shuffled out, went back to my room, and shut the door very
           | worried about the consequences of this.
           | 
           | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfrog
           | 
           | [1] https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=3416
           | 
           | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Knight_(musician)
           | 
           | [3] https://marktdkknight.bandcamp.com/track/maintheme-2-orig
           | ina...
           | 
           | [4] http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/release.php?id=7902
           | 
           | [5] https://flashtro.com/crystal-moonstone/
           | 
           | [6] https://archive.org/details/AmigaDownload/page/n259/mode/
           | 2up...
        
           | dark-star wrote:
           | not all are XM, some are s3m (ScreamTracker 3) ;-)
        
             | vhold wrote:
             | For the fun of it:                 jq '.[]["songs"][].file
             | | match("\\.([^.]+)$") | .captures[0].string' songs.json -r
             | | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr            3169 xm       1011
             | mod        226 it         86 s3m          4 nsf          3
             | rad          2 amd          2 S3M          1 mtm
        
       | janci wrote:
       | I included keygen music into internal license key generator tool.
       | That was fun easter egg
        
       | nottorp wrote:
       | The site greets me with "Your browser vendor has disabled
       | autoplay". Nope, I have disabled autoplay.
       | 
       | This may be a music player, but please don't play anything
       | without my permission...
        
         | matheusmoreira wrote:
         | Agreed. I have disabled autoplay. _Pray_ I don 't disable it
         | further, music player website.
        
       | cfq wrote:
       | https://cable.ayra.ch/webxmp/#2608
       | 
       | This is the X-Out loader music by Chris Hulsbeck, which you can
       | find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BqadZEIAU8
       | 
       | I used to have this keygen and I'd leave it on to loop all day in
       | the background while I worked circa ~2005.
        
       | no_time wrote:
       | Good stuff although it sounds different from any other player
       | I've heard.
       | 
       | https://cable.ayra.ch/webxmp/#835 goes hard.
        
         | StingyJelly wrote:
         | It plays in stereo! Others I've heard were mono. Maybe there
         | are more differences.
        
         | zokier wrote:
         | Here is another player that imho sounds bit better:
         | http://keygenmusic.tk/#track=AiR/AiR%20-%20Synapse%20Audio%2...
        
         | WirelessGigabit wrote:
         | Growing up in Belgium there was a lot of techno / house /
         | hardcore, specially because of the large hardcore scene in the
         | Netherlands. So this definitely was my music of choice
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp2xYLdtNls
         | 
         | That whole channel brings back memories. Good and bad.
        
       | skilled wrote:
       | Nice site!
       | 
       | From add_on.css,                   /*       player specific
       | positioning of the displayed 'frequency spectrum', etc
       | NOTE: the reflection and position handling is a fucking
       | nightmare: The Chome idiots      like to change their dumbshit
       | implementation with almost every minor release.. each      time
       | breaking what had to be used before.. bunch of clueless morons!
       | (Their latest achievement: reflection suddenly disapears (border
       | and all) AS SOON as       JavaScript draws to the contained
       | canvas. Of course they are also too dumb to use       regular
       | font definitions anymore.)
       | 
       | */
        
         | grishka wrote:
         | Ha, I remember how easily I achieved a similar effect in Flash
         | more than 10 years ago. It was easy because it was built as a
         | web application platform from the beginning, not a word
         | processor with some crazy macros bolted on top. But I am
         | sometimes amazed at what people do with a platform so
         | constrained.
         | 
         | Yep, it's been this many years and the modern CSS/JS still
         | hasn't caught up with Flash.
        
         | noduerme wrote:
         | Had a hard time getting it to work in Firefox, now it seems to
         | be down as I'm trying to load it in Chrome. I'm confused, the
         | little sliders in canvas look fine, why would Chrome change
         | anything about what shows up inside a <canvas> tag other than
         | potentially messing with the scaling?
         | 
         | [edit] ah, I see, there are several canvases that are supposed
         | to horizontally align. Yeh. Just take over the whole damn page
         | and draw it on a single canvas, I'd say. Flash Player 2023.
        
           | politelemon wrote:
           | It's working perfectly fine for me in FF, tried both desktop
           | and mobile.
        
       | WirelessGigabit wrote:
       | I remember going through this journey of pirating software.
       | 
       | Eventually, as software started to receive updates, keygens were
       | more interesting as those things didn't break when an update was
       | applied (or the update failed because a checksum mismatch of some
       | exe / dll.
       | 
       | For games, keygens and cracks were needed to bypass the original
       | disc requirement. One could try to image the disc with Alcohol
       | 120% which as able to retain the information needed to pass the
       | disc checks. The output images were of the MDX [1] format. But
       | those images were the size of your disc. So you had your
       | installed game (e.g. 8.5GB) and now the image.
       | 
       | Eventually some people were able to create a 'fixed' image of the
       | disc. I don't know if it was just an MDX with pointers to
       | nothing, or whether this had to be done on a game-by-game basis.
       | I can't link to anything here but searching for 'no-cd fixed
       | image' explains this better.
       | 
       | You'd then mount those images with Alcohol 120% to play the game.
       | 
       | Later on more detections popped up and I remember having to use
       | Daemon Tools as it employed more sophisticated measures to hide
       | it from the games.
       | 
       | Also, I foolishly registered on Daemon Tools' website and to this
       | day I get spam at daemontools@<mydomain>.<tld>...
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Descriptor_File
        
       | cracka wrote:
       | Not bad, but it's not searchable, it doesn't credit the
       | musicians, and there are loads of classic tracks missing.
        
       | pixelpoet wrote:
       | The nostalgia pang when a familiar track from some ancient demo
       | or keygen comes on is unreal... those truly were the days <3
        
       | nebula8804 wrote:
       | Wow I just got smacked in the face hard by nostalgia. Man where
       | did the time go? Thanks for the share!
        
       | nneonneo wrote:
       | Try out the "classic" player for a cooler UI:
       | https://cable.ayra.ch/modplayer/
        
       | wiradikusuma wrote:
       | Not directly related to the music. But I noticed that most games
       | that I s/pirated/borrowed when I was young, I then bought them
       | legally (on Steam/GOG, but when on sale) when I started making
       | money (have a job). I don't even play them again, just the sense
       | of "owning" them makes it worth buying. I don't know what to call
       | this phenomenon. Guilt?
        
         | matheusmoreira wrote:
         | Convenience. Steam is immoral DRM but there's no question it
         | provides a good service. It's essentially a package manager for
         | Windows. There's a reason people don't even remember the days
         | when they had to download and apply multiple 500 MB incremental
         | patches on a crappy connection just to play online.
        
       | InCityDreams wrote:
       | Great stuff. Started at #1 - am waiting for my Wavestation
       | keyboard keygen to come up. I can't believe I paid with a card to
       | a well-cool site based in Albania (warez.al? something like
       | that): they delivered and I became an irregular customer.
       | 
       | I have since, legally purchased all the Korg Vintage items :-)
       | Those were the real 'try before you [can afford to] buy' days.
        
       | gliixo wrote:
       | Best track is Marble (R2R Ableton) hands down
       | https://cable.ayra.ch/webxmp/#2724
        
       | kortex wrote:
       | Oh man, this is a nostalgia bomb. I wish this had a search
       | feature, so I can't find my favorite one, though I'm sure it's on
       | there. Author if you are here, I'd love the ability to search,
       | rather than scroll through thousands in a drop-down on mobile.
       | 
       | Unreel Superhero 3. I think it was off a keygen for Sony ACID,
       | propellerheads Reason, or Daemontools, can't remember which.
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/9STiQ8cCIo0
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-18 23:02 UTC)