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Shangri-law (SL) Review
Shangri-law
https://shangri-law.net/
Signup URL: none
Tracker Type: Music
Tracker Birthday: December 2007
SL is a specialty Electronic music tracker focused on the genre goa trance (from the 1990s) as well as its offshoots psy-trance (1998-present) and psychedelic chillout (1998-present). With over 7000 torrents, it is one of the best places to find music in these genres. SL only deals in lossless (FLAC) uploads, no MP3. If the uploader ripped the original CD themselves with EAC and proper configuration with a CUE and LOG file, this release is marked as "PROPER" and the uploader gets 1.5x seeding value for it. PROPER uploads trump non-PROPER uploads and faking such releases is obviously banworthy and is carefully monitored. Scans are rarely present in uploads. There are over 2000 releases marked as PROPER.
Unfortunately at the present in 2011 the tracker is relatively inactive with only a couple uploads a week. Over 5000 of the 7000 torrents have no seeders, and although many can be reseeded or reuploaded upon request by some of the loyal members, a large amount are lost into obscurity and many were deleted. A handful of the releases got copied to trackers like what.cd in the past but doing so was banworthy, so much of the material remains exclusive.
The custom program that used to be used for processing and uploading torrents to SL has been broken for months, so manual uploading is the only way to add torrents now. This means a loss of the standardized NFO files and naming/tagging schemes that were formerly present on all torrents. The rules and help pages are far outdated. There are no plans from the admin or sysops to update or improve the tracker. The sysops are inactive and the admin has somewhat given up on the tracker although he still hangs around. For now it remains running as it is.
SL is basically inaccessible to new users unless they have a lot of PROPER uploads to provide, which means they own a lot of CDs in the relevant genres which are not already shared by other members. As seen on the screenshot below, the ratio of seeders to leechers is nearly DIVIDE BY ZERO. New users start with 1 or 2 GB of upload which doesn't go far towards downloading FLAC releases at around 500MB a piece. This is generally not considered a negative thing as SL aims to be a tracker for collectors where everyone should contribute something personal to the pool. Users who want to just download and seed or copy stuff from other trackers are not desirable here. There has been no initiative taken to make it easier for new members to become established on the tracker.
Although updated designs for the tracker and fairer ratio systems have been extensively drafted in the past, the SysOps didn't have the time or commitment to implement such extensive changes, which would require reprogramming most of the tracker. Ratios and seeding are not really enforced but downloading is disabled for users below 0.3 ratio.
Logo:
Home/News:
Tracker Stats:
Torrent Categories:
Categories like Techno, House, and IDM are barely used. Electronica is occasionally used as a catch-all for (typically psychedelic or weird) music that doesn't belong in the other categories.
Freeleech: A couple random torrents are seemingly permanently marked [FREE] and don't count towards downloading stats. There are no other forms of freeleech.
Browse Page:
Forums: Very basic forum with 5 categories. Occasionally used to ask for help, otherwise inactive.
Rules: Upload/Download rules are strict (see screenshot). The rest of the rules are mostly common sense rules for all trackers.
Bonus System: none
Userclasses/Promotion: Almost all users are in the Uploader class. This class is obtained by just asking the admin for it.
Invite System: None. Only the admin can send invites. New recruits are basically required to explain about their collection of relevant music and how they can contribute to the tracker.
IRC Details: There is a private IRC channel. It usually goes for a whole week with users entering, idling and exiting, without saying anything. There are a few friendly folk that will reply sooner or later if you chat to their name. New uploads are automatically announced in the IRC channel.
Donation System/ Page: There is no page or system for donations, they are processed manually and allowed via moneybookers or PayPal.
Ratings & Personal Commentary
SL is a legendary tracker in its niche which still contains a large archive of music that is generally rare and obscure CDs that can sell for hundreds of dollars. Compared with trackers like what.cd, waffles.fm, torrenttech, and trancetraffic, SL has far more volume in the goa/psy trance genres. In the past many users that were found contributing interesting stuff on other trackers got invited to use SL instead.
The downfall of SL ultimately happened because of poor management decisions. SL wanted to be elitist and cater to collectors, but the thing about collectors is that they generally don't like people who try to leech without spending a penny themselves, which seems to describe the large majority of users on torrents. Collectors spent many hours and dollars building their collection and it's now worth a lot of money, so why should they share it for free? SL did not make strict enough policies on its users to earn the trust it needed from the users that could have provided it with thousands more PROPER releases, the administration was too soft-hearted. The ultimate goal of getting everything in the goa trance genre in PROPER rips was not reached.
I am disappointed at how it turned out, but nonetheless SL will be remembered for what it was and tried to be. It blurred the line between a tracker and scene group by having about 50 regular uploaders with high standardization between torrents (enforced by the custom uploading program) and high levels of quality. It provided many things not otherwise available for download on the internet, even a few CDs that are so rare as to be practically lost with only 1 known copy surviving surfaced on this tracker, so it has definitely served a lasting purpose. There are still interesting new uploads occasionally on SL, mostly from newer members, but there are now other trackers in the picture. Users interested in torrenting goa/psy trance music are somewhat fragmented these days and the majority of large collectors are reluctant to use or not at all interested in using torrents, or will only download and not upload. The admins continued resistance to cleansing and reviving this tracker will presumably keep it from ever rising again. Pity, it has a nice color scheme and a lot of members had wished it to do better.
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