Eventually, as software started to receive updates, keygens were more interesting as those things didn't break when an update was applied (or the update failed because a checksum mismatch of some exe / dll.

For games, keygens and cracks were needed to bypass the original disc requirement. One could try to image the disc with Alcohol 120% which as able to retain the information needed to pass the disc checks. The output images were of the MDX [1] format. But those images were the size of your disc. So you had your installed game (e.g. 8.5GB) and now the image.

Eventually some people were able to create a 'fixed' image of the disc. I don't know if it was just an MDX with pointers to nothing, or whether this had to be done on a game-by-game basis. I can't link to anything here but searching for 'no-cd fixed image' explains this better.

You'd then mount those images with Alcohol 120% to play the game.

Later on more detections popped up and I remember having to use Daemon Tools as it employed more sophisticated measures to hide it from the games.

Also, I foolishly registered on Daemon Tools' website and to this day I get spam at daemontools@<mydomain>.<tld>...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Descriptor_File

From add_on.css,

    /* 
 player specific positioning of the displayed 'frequency spectrum', etc 
 
 NOTE: the reflection and position handling is a fucking nightmare: The Chome idiots
 like to change their dumbshit implementation with almost every minor release.. each
 time breaking what had to be used before.. bunch of clueless morons! 
 (Their latest achievement: reflection suddenly disapears (border and all) AS SOON as 
 JavaScript draws to the contained canvas. Of course they are also too dumb to use 
 regular font definitions anymore.)

http://keygenmusic.org -- A hugh library of keygen music

http://modarchive.org -- Site for Tracker Musicians

https://cable.ayra.ch/webxmp/#835 goes hard.

Unreel Superhero 3. I think it was off a keygen for Sony ACID, propellerheads Reason, or Daemontools, can't remember which.

https://youtu.be/9STiQ8cCIo0

This may be a music player, but please don't play anything without my permission...

I have since, legally purchased all the Korg Vintage items :-) Those were the real 'try before you [can afford to] buy' days.

This is the X-Out loader music by Chris Hülsbeck, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BqadZEIAU8

I used to have this keygen and I'd leave it on to loop all day in the background while I worked circa ~2005.

https://cable.ayra.ch/webxmp/#1884

I can't believe it!

This is great. Thank you.

"8-bit" is also often used to refer to the genre of chiptune, even though much of the music is produced for higher bit depth systems.

Many keygen tunes are chiptunes, produced on trackers, but many are not. Some are straight-up DnB, techno, or trance, not remotely chiptune. E.g. Here's a track from downthread which would be considered rave/ old skool / breakebeat hardcore or just "hardcore" (not to be confused with like a dozen other genres called "old skool" or "hardcore" (it's a very ineffable genre from a fairly narrow time period, from a fairly underground at the time subculture, who released via physically unstable "dubplates" that haven't survived well through digital archiving)).

https://cable.ayra.ch/webxmp/#835

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakbeat_hardcore

It's almost like language is fluid and descriptive, not proscriptive.

> Illegitimate key generators are typically distributed by software crackers in the warez scene and demoscene. These keygens often play "Keygen music", which may include the genres dubstep or chiptunes[1] in the background and have artistic user interfaces.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keygen

More details: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/66nvia/w...

I wouldn't be surprised if many of these tunes have just been ripped from somewhere else and not actually made by keygen crackers themselves.

Fairly certain the music itself strongly predates these terms. I'm reminded of when the phrase "mash-up" got popular; though hip-hop DJ's doing "blends" had been happening for years before.