Coda.fm – A Refreshing Music Torrent Site
Written by Ernesto on January 11, 2009Coda.fm is a new music torrent indexer that looks surprisingly good for a torrent site, and one that combines great design and functionality like we’ve never seen before. Yet another great way to discover new music – if only the RIAA approved.
Coda.fm is a torrent indexer, meaning that the site does not operate its own tracker. Those browsing through the site will immediately notice that it’s unlike any other indexer. It focuses on the music niche, and has several features that make it stand out when compared to other torrent sites.
The navigation of the site can be compared to some of the better e-commerce sites, with listings of popular and new artists and albums, and the option to browse through different genres. On top of that, the site has a full-blown recommendation engine that makes it a great tool to discover new music, especially when combined with the album reviews and artist bios.
The site is open to everyone, and users are not required to sign up. However, those who take a few seconds to create an account can post comments, and track the status of any torrents they upload. To make sure that the site remains free from spam, every uploaded torrent has to be approved by one of the moderators.
Recommendations, Artist Details and Track Listing
“I’m a music lover,” the Coda.fm founder told TorrentFreak. “I always use BitTorrent to get my fix, but I was disappointed with all the public indexers and private trackers.”
“I found the experience of searching for music on public trackers very tiresome, always having to navigate through a lot of irrelevant search results and dead torrents, and was tired too of the strict rules of most of the private trackers and the elitism of some of their communities,” he added.
This encouraged the founder to build Coda.fm, which he released to the public only a few days ago. The only downside is that the site will be a major target for the RIAA and IFPI, especially because all the torrents are manually approved before they are added to the site. The “we are a search engine just like Google” argument doesn’t quite hold up here.
That aside, Coda.fm is truly an amazing site, and it is quite refreshing to see a new indexer that thinks outside the box. What do you think?
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47 Responses
i hope this expands into some less known bands..
all i saw with a 2 min browse through was MTV craplist and artists that sound like there singing in a toilet..
wheres the real music, not this over produced horse shit I can find on every radio station across the planet.
Looks like a site for pedos. Bad luck to Coda.fm
Looks like a site for p3d0s. Bad luck to Coda.fm
Existing for only a week excuses the content issue :)
imma get banned from what in a day or two :(
I couldn't seem to find anything in flac format. Hardly a site for music lovers.
Seems kinda nice, but as I believe others have already pointed out, it's mostly mainstream music in there. I mean, I mostly listen to Hardcore (the ""techno"" one) and Japanese music and with a fast few searches I couldn't find any music I'd like to download from there.
Thankfully I have already found places where I can get what I want so it's not like it's the end of the world.
It's new site and I hope it'll grow :) And good luck to the people behind the site.
IP location: U.S. Wtf? Are they insane?
KoRN? Mariah Carey? Amy fucking Winehouse?
I like the idea of Coda.fm, and I really love the site layout. But their music selection's total bullshit. Seriously, it's like taking a virtual walk down the CD isle at Wal-mart.
They're new, though, so I guess it's sort of excusable. Sort of.
Suggestion: The music library is dire. Work on it. Let people search for music by country of origin, get rid of the 'World Music' category. Seperate 'Hard Rock & Metal'. Add Punk.
Interesting concept, but I too agree that some not-so-mainstream music should be added as well. A variety of genres and some FLAC torrents and other varieties would benefit the site greatly.
The site has a lot of potential, though, and I can see it growing and becoming better in the future. Unfortunately, that will also mean increased attention from the RIAA and the record labels, and I didn't verify this myself but another commenter said the website was hosted in the United States – if that's true, the future of the site may be bleak.
Only time will tell. For now I think I'll continue to use private trackers which offer a greater variety of genres and music that doesn't play on American Top 40. ;)
This should be something I would use IF it was more specific with genres and included sub-genres. I know what I like, and I don't see it there. A drop down menu for some category's listing the sub-genres(The mentionable ones) would be fantastic for searching. I'll give the site another week before I use it – we'll see if the music selection improves.
Hi, i am the administrator of Coda.fm
I wanted to reply to those who complain about the music selection. We just launched (less than a week ago), and it has sense to start with the mainstream music, that is the most looked after. We also have a fair amount of indie music, for example, but look at the "Top Albums" page to see what albums are the most downloaded: the "Wall Mart stuff", and that isn't my fault (Enya #3! eeewww…)
I want more variety and more interesting bands too, but I'm not the one who uploads the torrents. So, be more constructive and help us, upload your favorite bands that you think we're missing. You don't even have to register to upload a torrent, and you don't need to create a new one, just download them from another public directory (Pirate Bay, Mininova, etc.) and upload it at coda. It's a simple form, with just one step.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback, we will continue working to improve, and your help could be decisive to get the more interesting stuff.
Cheers…
The Coda.fm guy
yeah thats true, not the admins fault for the music selection. has to be worked on, hopefully you will be sticking around.. people are somewhat tired or reluctant to post any music because next thing you know the site goes down.
Oh wow, an entire week! How generous of you!
Wow, nothing like refreshing music to start the day! LOL
privacy.es.tc
Don't worry about that, we are about to move in a few days, and the website doesn't break any law of my country, so, for now, i feel safe.
wait a minute just cause they approve links how is that different, making the quality hand picked means its actually a better search engine then google could ever do via some bot with parameters.
So the authors writing on this doesn't hold true, technically speaking all he is doing is taking the computer process out and adding himself in….
A minus because it is not very scalable.
Just signed up for an account, seems interesting. Help them out and upload some torrents.
Well im always looking to propagate torrents, i can help these guys out.
Site is down here.
Hopefully it's just some server issues and not an RIAA take down.
Well, the fact that all torrents must be approved is pretty much a minus. Is this site scalable that much?
A minus? How do you figure that? Don't you think it will avoid crap encodes for a start?
Still down…DIGG hit them .. They need to upgrade..
Hopefully Coda.fm will be back soon . I really wanna check this site out.
In addition, it has been reported by reputable sources that the RIAA has plainly given up its ludacrous litigation campaign against individuals, relying instead on deals with ISPs to monitor and disconnect internet access upon repeated copyright infringement. There is just no stopping that train and it looks like the AAs have finally realized it.
All the best to Coda.fm
Well – TF staff, nows the time to start using IntenseDebate to get rid of trolls.
What Ernesto was pointing at was that when the mods are actually approving torrents, they can no longer claim that they don't know what the torrent will help you download. Many meta search engines have used the argument that they simply can't know what a torrent-file points to.
From what i've seen the admins "blaim" the "digg-effect". Simply put, too many visitors for their limited servers.
Approval is good for quality. In most of the torrent sites I can find the same albums 10+ times, which is just plain lame spam. Also some have no information written about them. I wish coda.fm good luck in growing. :)
Unless they win there new battle against the ISP's. But hey theres now alot of new business opertunitys in secure VPN's! I know Il be giving my money over! Better I give it to VPN businesses then the industrys.
The more they clamp down, the more I download and share. Lovely little ring they got going isnt it.
It means that the community as a whole has to adher to much stricter standards regarding encoding and quality of releases. I don't bother with bittorrenting music usually as people release 128kb encoded torrents thinking that's good enough.
It is as scalable or not as the community make it. Considering what happened to private music torrent communities, I doubt very much coda will last.
there is no "ambient" category. what the hell is "new age"?
Yes you are right !
For now it appears that that place is overrun by teenager, because the site only features pop.
Looks like it has potential! but… Where's the punk section???
kraytracker.com, invite only but you can get in if you know where to look.
i just use http://cyberfiesta.co.cc
Thanks for the link, it does sound like a huge pink elephant with a bulls eye on its side and an arrow pointing to the bulls eye with the words "RIAA shoot here" though…
(I hope i was descriptive enough :p )
Good luck CODA.. sounds like you're gonna need it.
Cheers!
http://www.eZee.se
The site looks nice, but i'm not amazed.
First of all, the site is very slow for me which is a pain in the arse.
I know the site is new but all the music I see to mainstream like "meh" said.
The recommendation engine sucks.
The results are poor. for instence if you like Amom Amarth the recommendations are;
Death Magnetic Metallica
All Hope Is Gone Slipknot
Not close at all.
I know private trackers that are superior to this site.
Seems like a pretty good site, last.fm is getting a bit old for me at the moment.
http://www.fetchmp3.com
Looks like a great site! Good luck to Coda.fm
The published date of albums are just rubbish wrong. Since they group by these…
Oh well. Good Luck
They're now back up and faster than ever.
Sorry fella pirates id have to disagree this once, that site is a phail. No drum&bass as a music genre is a massive phail.
Misic selection isn't all that bad on this site, i saw some stuff from Godspeed You Black Emperor and other 'lesser' known bands which is pretty good imo.
this place is pretty nice! i dont know what all of you people are talking about when you say that its a bunch of main stream crap. Animal collective is right on the front page, as well as the fleet foxes and a whole bunch of other indie stuff. I will be visiting this place quite frequently!
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