Usenet Beatles posts (tons of)

[Lon Chaney III]

Some of you may not use, or have ever used, a news server to download stuff from newsgroups. It has been and still is an excellent source of Beatles unofficial stuff and has loads of FLAC and MP3 material. Direct downloads, fast and no need for a VPN - I've been using newsgroups for about 30 years now and consider it an essential resource. In order to access binary newsgroups you will need an account with a premium news server provider. I use Newshosting ($11 a month for unlimited downloads) and have been very satisfied with it. I have my post age set to something like 5000 so I get posts from 2008 onwards. It's not perfect and you may have to wade through a bunch of spam (which you can easily mass deleted, depending on the newsreader you use) but there is tons of good stuff available in the groups. No need to worry about seeders or deleted posts. It's a fantastic resourse that, for me, is still the best there is (excepting this fine forum of course!!).

Actually, that's not me being facetious, I'm sure many of the remixes/remaster on here never turn up on the news servers.

Hope this proves useful to someone on here.

[aslak]

Hi,
I just became aware of this forum and joined - many thanks. Looks like I've been missing out on a goldmine.

Like you, I've been using usenet for years but, maybe because I don't use a premium news server, I don't see much Beatles material on mine and what is there is mixed in with lots of dubious looking stuff.
Am I looking in the wrong places? Grateful if you could give me some pointers. I find usenet newsgroups a handy and efficient way to download material. Would using binsearch or similar be better?
For example, the Springsteen group is still active, bit more sporadic than in earlier days, but very useful for filling gaps.
Cheers
A

[Beatles4you]

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[beatlefan99]

Yes please I would like some info on this if possible.

[Lon Chaney III]

OK. Apologies for the long post but I wanted to give as comprehensive an overview as I could. Please feel free to fire questions at me.


Usenet overview:

The usenet (newsgroups) has been around for nearly 40 years. It comprises of binary and text newsgroups. Binary newsgroups are where the good stuff is found but you need a premium newsserver to access them. There are free newsservers but they only allow access to non-binary newsgroups i.e. text discussions or offer very limited access to some binary groups.

A company that offers a premium newsserver service stores all the usenet posts, going back years (its 'retention' factor), on its servers and we're talking many, many, terrabytes of data. There are usenet hubs that disseminates all usenet posts to servers all round the world so there is never any form of exclusivity - all premium news services store all the newsgroups. However, some services may restr5ict access to certain newsgroups for legal reasons, depending on which country they're based in.

You will need a newsreader which is the way you gain access to usenet posts. There are freeware ones as well as paid ones. I use Newsbin which costs $20 and is probably the most highly rated newsreader out there. If you want the ability to do global searches (which you do!), that will cost $15 a quarter. The servince I use, Newshosting, provides its own, free, news reader and also includes global searches. There are some premium news services out there that are long established. Two in particular have a long history. They are Giganews and Easynews. They are top of the tree but if you want unlimited downloads it's going to cost you. Maybe $25 - $35 a month. Newshosting, UsenetServer and Supernews are all excellent services - Google them for reviews and popularity.

The heyday of newsgroups is definitely over but there is still a wealth of stuff out there although you might have to wade therough lots of spam postings to get it. The news readers allow you to filter on username and keywords in messages or headers, so that is a great way to get rid of the spam.

There are lossless news groups and MP3 news groups. Generally the MP3 groups have a lot more posts but there are still a lot of lossless posts still.

Here's the key Beatles groups.

alt.binaries.lossless beatles
alt.binaries.sounds.lossless.beatles
alt.binaries.beatles
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.beatles

When you first install and run the newsreader, it will download the names of all the groups on that server (many thousands!). You then select the groups you want to 'subscribe' to and from then on you will just see your subscribed groups. New headers will automatically be downloaded to your subscribed newsgroups and old ones (ranger configurable by you) will get removed. Then it's just a case of selecting the files you want and clicking 'download'. Most newsreaders will automatically unpack the binaries and put the unpacked files in a location configured by you.

I know this sounds horrendous but it does become clear pretty quickly. The most complex part is learning to configure your choice of news reader i.e. retention dates, number of headers to download, where to extract them to and so on.

I have never tried to write a usenet overview before so apologies if this is as clear as mud. Happy to answer any questions you might have.

[alphabeatles]

You might also consider S-oul-seek (without the dashes). You can find pretty much anything in any type of media you're looking for there. I read about it on some Beatles forum a few years ago and have made much use of it since. Please Google.

[Lon Chaney III]

Guitars 101has a huge collection of concerts and outtakes both for The Beatles and just about any other band/artist you can think of. It's direct downloads, not P2P. You can access the site directly but a site called the The Ultimate Bootleg Experience has a nicer user interface and it's links are all from Guitars 101. Really worth checking out.

Note that these sites only contain unoffcial releases, no official releases for any band are on there.

[aslak]

Hi,

I looked again at Beatles newsgroups. Although I don't use a premium news server I can see postings on alt. binaries.beatles and alt.binaries.lossless.beatles but the subject description, from and message-ID fields are just jumbles of mixed letters and numbers. They just look dubious. Obviously I am wary about downloading anything risky.

Is there any way to work out what these uploads are? Does this mirror what you see on a premium news server.
For example, this is from alt.binaries.beatles: 98045ed0dce14ffab4cc3d57c607e982 (17/41) "98045ed0dce14ffab4cc3d57c607e982.part16.rar" yEnc - it shows the subject description.
Any thoughts/advice?
Thanks
A.

[Egg_Crisis]

...but the subject description, from and message-ID fields are just jumbles of mixed letters and numbers. They just look dubious..

Anything that looks dubious is dubious (unless it's preceded by a plain text post announcing what they're uploading).
It's one reason I gave up on newsgroups 10-ish years ago. Everything seemed to be swamped in spam posts.

[Lon Chaney III]

Hi,

I looked again at Beatles newsgroups. Although I don't use a premium news server I can see postings on alt. binaries.beatles and alt.binaries.lossless.beatles but the subject description, from and message-ID fields are just jumbles of mixed letters and numbers. They just look dubious. Obviously I am wary about downloading anything risky.

Is there any way to work out what these uploads are? Does this mirror what you see on a premium news server.
For example, this is from alt.binaries.beatles: 98045ed0dce14ffab4cc3d57c607e982 (17/41) "98045ed0dce14ffab4cc3d57c607e982.part16.rar" yEnc - it shows the subject description.
Any thoughts/advice?
Thanks
A.

A lot of those posts are actually encrypted files. You need a 'key' un-encrypt them. I used to know how to do that may years ago but I have no idea now as I've never felt I needed to and don't have access to . You can try sorting on newest or oldest posts, on poster name or alphabetically. Sorting on poster name ensures that all the non-spam posts are grouped according to the poster's name making them easier to get.