What happend to Datpiff?

What a time to be alive. Once upon a time there was this website called Datpiff. I think I was around 16 years old when I was actively downloading mixtapes on the daily. Downloading music was at an all time high. Most kids my age knew how to ‘illegally’ download stuff through P2P software, but Datpiff was different because it gave a cool alternative where you could legally download mixtapes for free.

And it wasn’t like it was only mixtapes from unknown artists. Great names like Lil Wayne, Busta Rhymes and Wu-Tang Clan would drop their projects for free.

Besides these well known legends, it also was a place where you could really find the next rap superstar. I vividly remember downloading Travis Scott’s mixtape ‘Days Before Rodeo’ and thinking that this could definitely be the next great sensation, because of his alternative sounds and ideas.

For years Datpiff was THE place to go check out your favorite rap artist. The community around the platform also really lived and shaped a lot of things that we still know and use in the culture to this day. Year after year the platform kept professionalizing, with scheduled releases. Collaborations with big artists; even with sound tags that will last forever. It was also the place where rappers like Wiz Khalifa and Joey Bada$$ became household names.

The allure of Datpiff was the great quality and quantity of music for free. Even your favorite rapper was taking this platform seriously, because if you were serious about your music career, uploading to Datpiff had to be part of your strategy.

As I have said before, in those days downloading music was a normal thing to do. But there were starting to show some cracks. On one hand, the music industry absolutely hated how people stole the music and left them with empty pockets. On the other hand, human nature is lazy. So when one side puts everything on everything to get people back to a sort of revenue model, and the other side is okay with the given options, things can start to shift.

One of the first instances of a commercial mixtape that I remember is ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late’ by Drake. Although it’s definitely not the first commercial mixtape, it still was groundbreaking in the culture. Originally there were talks between Drake and DatPiff founder Kyle Reilly to get the mixtape on the platform. But unfortunately Drake’s label Cash Money Records put a stop to it, and instead the mixtape, contractually an album, went on to platforms like Apple music and eventually Spotify. This turned out to be a very lucrative move for Drake and many followed.

These streaming platforms are also the reason that the platform came into decline. Why download individually from a website, when you can listen to every artist and album you want for a monthly fee. Newer generations don’t even know a time before streaming, so it can almost be seen as a lost art.

As of right now, the domain of the platform is reachable. There is a message, directly pointed to the user, where they describe their future plans. The text reads as if they’ll eventually come back in a new and improved form. In the meantime users can check out the Archive on archive.org to look up old mixtapes.

More recently a lot of users have complained that those mixtapes aren’t available on Archive.org, and may be lost forever. Because the main problem with downloading then and streaming now, is that a lot of the great mixtapes that were available for free on Datpiff, aren’t available on streaming platforms. This is because of copyright infringement. Many artists (more so producers) sampled great songs where they didn’t clear the samples.

Although many people enjoy streaming platforms, there is a small group, myself included, that reminisces to the older days of platforms with downloads. Speaking purely for myself; I find that a music taste is more genuinely developed, because every individual download is an explicit choice. Whereas streaming platforms force certain playlists which are often very manipulated on the backside.

I don’t think we will ever have a similar platform as Datpiff again. Record labels and even artists know their worth and I think it is unimaginable that people will revert to giving out free songs. On the other hand, people are getting fed up with streaming platforms because of their rising fees and little payout on the artist side. So maybe one day there will be a new alternative and then we will be looking at streaming like we are looking at Datpiff right now.

What do you think the future holds? What artist did you discover on Datpiff? Let me know in the comments.