Online Collection of Keygen Music
21 comments
·July 30, 2025fortydegrees
I've been looking for that Paradox Photoshop CS2 one for years. Great nostalgic memories.
I've always been in slight awe of these kind of teams/releases. Cracking (mostly) for the raw intellectual challenge and bundling it with demoscene-ish artistic expression - usually a unique UI and obviously a great chiptune. I've always wondered why that behaviour emerged..
bryant
> I've always wondered why that behaviour emerged..
Speculating: there may be parallels between this and other fields with entirely unnecessary artistic expression. Think watchmaking where watch movements with superlative finishing are celebrated and often command premium pay (e.g watches with the Geneva Seal). Beyond a certain point, the finishing adds absolutely nothing to the watch aside from showcasing talent.
There's something to the idea that if someone spent a ton of effort building something, even if it's superfluous, it garners a level of trust in the end product.
xyst
I used to hang in those IRC channels. Some of the "crews" mentioned spending more time on creating graphics, mixing new sound rather than cracking/reverse engineering the software itself.
darknavi
Seems to be missing one of my most nostalgic from Sony Vegas 9 cracks:
SuperShibe
„This is EPIC“ - King Harkinian
djeastm
This music was always great, but always played so loudly.
glimshe
Great memories. "Keygen music" feels like a genre of electronic music... Are there people making electronic music that sounds like Keygen music but with modern instruments?
lock1
Tracker music? Pretty sure communities that develop those tools and use them to create music still exist.
Relevant link: Ahoy - Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBkg-iPrbw
webstrand
Well, there's still people making still making chiptunes, and there's still interest in developing tracker technology both for chiptunes (i.e. OpenMPT) and for music composition in general (Renoise DAW).
<https://4mat.bandcamp.com/album/modern-closure> came out in 2019 and is one of my favorite albums of all time, but I'm not sure that it fits all of the elements of "keygen music" which are hard to pin down.
JdeBP
It's a whole YouTube genre. Witness this chiptune version of Howard Carter's Stand-up Maths Theme:
nvllsvm
mind.in.a.box's album "R.E.T.R.O." (2010) has a few songs that sound keygen-esque (aka chiptune).
Not all their stuff sounds like that, but I've been a big fan since first discovering them via a sample included in the XMMS2 media player way back in the early 2000's.
chrisco23
Ha! Memories from 25 years ago when you had to run Windoze for your audio and sometimes chess software.
JdeBP
More than 25 years.
The first thing that it played to me was Crockett's Theme.
I spent the first few seconds looking at the description, which said something else, and saying to myself "No, that's definitely Crockett's Theme.".
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mdavid626
Really cool!
stuckkeys
That is awesome.
jimmydoe
brought back lots of nice memories
charcircuit
>There is no illegal content. Just music from keygens
Does this mean this site properly licensed these songs?
1970-01-01
Yes, I believe it does. No lawyer knows who the hell these underground artists are or if it is even possible to sue them. The first step in any lawsuit is have someone to take from.
Impressive collection, the although website is slamming my poor T8100 powered thinkpad to 100% at times listening to the collection.