Backstory:
In 2015, I officially begun collecting various Cooper material for the purpose of sorting and compiling.
It was arduous work... Each individual file had to be located in the hidden corners of the internet, best copy then had to be re-acquired, date had to be found, some files needed edit, and lastly treated; Filename, file info (tags), embedded images, sorting by date - and then uploaded somewhere.
Now, 6 years later - it's done.
I then set out to do the gentlemanly thing, and contact HOTT, sharing the project with them and asking their input.
Since they still host the main Hour Of The Time *.mp3 files, and also have higher quality for sale, I would at least have their voice heard.
I was pretty open about it, giving them chance to say yay or nay, or have me edit info to their liking.
This was January 1st, 2021 - and I set out not to publish the url anywhere - and let them have their say.
A couple of days later, I got response they/he wasn't happy about it (having it hosted anywhere else), and contacted a lawyer to have their input. This was mainly due to a trust Mr. Cooper set up for his daughters; to collect revenue from sales.
It's been 20 years since his passing (RIP), but that's how it is.
I have since waited. And waited. And have not heard back from them again. No "delete it", nor "prepare for lawsuit" - but I have a bad gut-feeling they might decide to have the entire thing pulled. I also wonder if this is another reason (beside censorship...) why all Cooper content is so hard to find these days.
In case they request I pull it, I will uphold a gentleman's agreement.
But darn if I'm gonna let 6 years of work go to hell without at least an option for someone else to make a backup.
So I've decided to go against my original take on it: "keep it off the books - don't publish it - just see how it goes", and rather publish the url this once - here in this forum exclusively:
It also features a few episodes (XXXXu - [Date] - (unlisted) [Filename].mp3) not even available on hourofthetime.com, plus over 300 alternative versions.
You know what to do. It's about 35.7GB.
Thanks.