It really sucked to see OiNK’s home raided this Tuesday morning. The servers went down, and 180,000 music fans worldwide lost their music gold mine.

It’s pretty much the consensus that OiNK was the #1 best place on the internet to find music. They usually had multiple versions (qualities) of just about every single album you could think of—old or new. Often, they had FLAC rips, too. There is no doubt that it was the best place to find lossless music.

People consume music differently these days. It’s not like a music enthusiast is going to actually buy every single album they want to hear. OiNK provided a very easy way to taste a broad spectrum of music, and most will tell you that it has led them to purchase CD’s, go to concerts, etc.

Artists used the service, too. I’m actually making this post because I really wanted to link to this brilliant posting from DJ Rapture. He sums the whole thing up rather well from a unique point of view. Check it out.

Update: Rob from Demonbaby made an excellent (even longer) post about how the record industry has totally blown the new era and shot itself in the foot. He has a lot of good points, and a few good laughs. He calls for a boycott of the labels so they will hurry up and get the point.