I posted a little guide quite a long time ago, and I've repeated it
below, nothing significant having changed in the interim.
There is somewhat of a learning curve to be dealt with, but with a bit
of perseverance, you'll be posting in no time. Listen, I'm no rocket
scientist and if I can do it, you can too. If you get stuck anywhere
along the way, you can always ask for a little help right here.
Let's Get Posting!
Spidey
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A Beginner's Guide For Posting Music MP3s
OVERVIEW: Usenet was designed for collaboration and in this, it is
similar to email, except the messages are posted for all to see. You
can attach files to your messages, but only little ones. However,
people want to share larger files such as MP3s, so posting software
breaks these into smaller segments, and the downloading software puts
them back together again on your computer. These segments are posted
first to the sender's server, and then shared to all the other servers
that ask to be fed this information.
Usenet is set up in groups, with the group names expressing the areas
of interest. This guide is written for groups where people like to
share music in the MP3 format. No one can stop you from posting other
content in other formats to these groups, but if you do, people will
understandably complain.
Here are some examples of groups:
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.1950s
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.1960s
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.1970s
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.1980s
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.1990s
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.2000s
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.blues
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.classic-rock
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.classical
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.comedy
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.folk
POSTING ON TOPIC: A valid exception for posting only relevant content
would be compilations or collections that contain a variety of music.
Examples of this might be a CD of Elvis tunes or a Time-Life series,
each spanning several decades. Another might be a Bonnie Raitt CD with
Country, Rock, and Blues tunes. It is possible to cross-post to all
the involved decades and/or genre, but this is being done less and
less, as a better practice is to post to one group, and just post a
message in the others about what you are uploading to the one you
chose.
RIPPING: If you have a CD and plan to rip it to MP3s, you must decide
on the settings for the MP3 files. Rather than enter into a discussion
about the pros and cons of the various settings, let us instead agree
that you are ripping this music to share, and therefore you should
provide the format that will please the most people. This means
setting your ripping software to create files at the highest possible
constant bit rate in stereo. This equates to 320 kbps, 44,100 Hz, 16
Bit, Stereo. (I do feel compelled to acknowledge that there are
convincing arguments to use a lower or variable bit rate, in mono or
joint stereo where appropriate. Please consider this acknowledged.)
RERIPPING: If you don't have the CD and the music you want to share is
already ripped to MP3 format, but in a lower bitrate, post it just as
it is. The initial compression removed some level of content, and
nothing can ever return it.
TITLES AND TAGS: You should pay a great deal of attention to track
titles and tags to insure that these are correct, because the effort
to correct any errors will be multiplied by the number of people who
download your music.
Minimum information in the title should be:
Track No. (space) dash (space) Artist (space) Dash (space) Title.mp3
This standard format has been arrived at over the years, and the dash
separators are now expected and used by many music database programs.
The Track No. should be zero-filled to the total number of tracks in
the posting. This would usually be 01, 02, 03, etc.
The Artist should be Firstname Lastname for individuals, with the
"The" omitted for group names. Examples would be "Gladys Knight And
The Pips", or "Kinks". There are rare exceptions, but let common sense
guide you with those. Again, this standard is now expected by many
program packages that utilize the file names.
Most posting software will allow you to add information to the Subject
line in addition to the file name for the track. For example, you
might want to add the album name or the rate at which the music was
ripped. If you didn't do the ripping, you might want to add "nmr",
standing for Not My Rip. This way, people won't expect you to have the
CD handy to provide re-rips or additional artwork.
Tags contain information about the track, and they are appended to the
actual music data. Your MP3 player may read the tags and display some
of the contents as it plays the music. The current standard is to
write ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags. As with the titles, minimal is best, but
try to include the Track, Artist, Title, Album, and Genre. The Genre
field is as problematical as the posting group, as you usually rip an
entire CD at a time, selecting one Genre for all the tracks while they
could easily be made up of vastly different types of music. Just pick
the over-arching music type, such as Folk, Rock & Roll, Jazz, Blues,
Classical, etc.
ARTWORK: It has become expected that posted music include a scan of at
least the CD front, and many posters include the CD back and any liner
notes as well (Furthermore, most MP3 tag editors will allow you to
include artwork in the tags). If you are doing the scanning, use a
high enough resolution so that even the smallest text is easily
readable. You won't go wrong at 300 dpi.
DATA RECOVERY: The protocol used between news servers is such that
segments can get lost without this being detected and corrected, so a
posting can appear complete to you on your server, but still be
incomplete to someone else on their server. If you're posting more
than one or two tracks, you should use data verification software to
create parity (.par) files to address this issue. This saves a lot of
frustration for downloaders and helps keep requests for reposts to a
minimum.
SOFTWARE: Since you're reading this, you obviously have a news reader
of some sort. Newcomers frequently want to know what's the "best"
software to use to do the various tasks. The real answer is that there
isn't any "best" software, and people tend to recommend whatever
they're using at the time, even if they've never really tried anything
else.
So no recommendations, but below are links to some well-known
packages:
CD Ripping: Exact Audio Copy - http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
Title Editing: Bulk Renaming Utility -
http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/
Tag Editing: MP3Tag - http://www.mp3tag.de/
Posting: PowerPost - http://powerpost.cjb.net/
News Reader: Forte Agent - http://www.forteinc.com/
Date Verification: QuickPar - http://www.quickpar.org.uk/
Archiving And/Or Compression: MP3s are already compressed, and Zip or
Rar files merely hide the content detail from the potential
downloader, so don't use them. However, if someone else has already
done so: http://www.winzip.com/ http://www.rarlab.com/
Lastly, a short philosophical discussion: Besides posting the highest
quality music with the most accurate information that you can, the
main general guideline is to watch the regular posters and copy them.
In any event, please share your music. It is a lot of work, but it is
very gratifying. If you download music someone else has shared, take a
moment to post a thank you. You won't be able to avoid noticing that
some people behave badly. It's normal to overreact to this, but always
wait a few days to see if you really still want to yell back at them
(you probably won't). If someone makes an honest mistake, help them to
do it right rather than criticize. Posters are very highly motivated
by requests, so ask away! Thanks for reading.
On Wed, 07 Aug 2019 06:31:30 -0500, walkonwater <totdrum@yahoo.com>
wrote:
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>walkonwater
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