The Future of HipHopLossless

15 years online

HipHopLossless was created with a simple goal: keep hip-hop releases available in real, carefully preserved quality — not streams, not transcodes and not broken reuploads.

Every album here is selected manually.
Every release is checked before publishing.
Some releases come from personal CD and vinyl rips made over the years, while many others were sourced from different platforms and communities and verified again to make sure the files and tagging were correct.

This has never been an automated upload site.
It has always been a curated archive.

Over these 15 years the project survived database loss, a full rebuild from zero, multiple file-host changes and many similar sites disappearing from the internet.
For a long time it worked because the site could support itself.

The last three years changed that.

How downloads relate to the site

Some downloads require a premium account on the file host.

Premium does not pay for the site itself.
It pays the file-hosting service for speed, limits and resume capability.
A small part of that payment is shared with uploaders, including this archive.

If the website disappears, the files disappear as well — regardless of any premium accounts.

Why this no longer works

For many years the file-hosting model was enough to keep the project alive.

Today it is no longer stable. Premium purchases are less frequent and the share received by uploaders is significantly smaller than it used to be, while server and storage costs remained and gradually increased.

Because of this the system that supported HipHopLossless for over a decade no longer provides reliable sustainability.

Updates slowed down and vinyl rips almost stopped not because the interest in music disappeared, but because the time required to maintain the archive is no longer balanced by the site’s ability to maintain itself.

Project economics

Keeping the archive online costs about $340 per month in servers, storage and maintenance.

File-host income is unpredictable. Some months it covers part of the expenses, some months it is close to zero.

Because of this the project currently depends on chance rather than stable support.
Donations are introduced not to make the project profitable, but to make it sustainable enough to continue existing.

What will happen next

I will evaluate the situation on May 1, 2026.
This is not a shutdown date — it is the moment when I decide how the project continues.

If the monthly goal is reached

• the site continues active operation
• regular updates (2–3 times per week)
• new rips and preserved rare releases

If the goal is not reached

• the project moves into archive mode
• updates become occasional
• more unused files will be removed to reduce storage

In archive mode the site will remain accessible as long as technically possible, currently planned at least until May 31, 2027.

Monthly survival goal

Reaching the goal means the project continues actively.
Not reaching it means the site gradually transitions into archive mode.

Ways to Support HipHopLossless

Choose any convenient option. Every contribution helps keep the archive online.

This site exists because someone spent evenings searching, checking and preserving releases so they would not disappear over time.

If nobody continues doing that, eventually they will.

— HipHopLossless