About 8 months ago, when I first got into torrenting, the first thing I uploaded was my Celtic music collection. I had been working on it for years, and was (am!) very proud of it. Since Ive been doing this, I've learned a lot about how to fix tags and so forth, as well as significantly adding to it from various other torrents. The torrent gathered a lot of nice comments and some helpful suggestions.

Since then, the size of the thing has increased hugely. Not only through many purchased albums and some rare finds at garage sales and old record stores, but through some other torrents that are often very badly seeded. I am retorrenting the whole thing now as a version 2. I want to thank all the other uploaders who have helped make this possible, and pass along to any reader that you can surely search for the original torrents if you don't want all the other accompaniments. I have normalized and corrected tags as far as I could, but these databases are faulty, and I am sure some mistakes remain. I have also converted all formats to mp3 for the iPod crowd and because FLAC sucks. Some of the purists are going to be pissy because I have reduced many 320 kbps recordings to 128 for the sake of saving size. Again, if you deeply care about bit rate you can find a lot of this collection in separate torrents at higher bit rates if you search individually, but they are usually badly seeded.

The torrent is quite large, and I am sorry to announce that the number of files forces me to make this a .RAR torrent, because THE PIRATE BAY will not allow the torrent in any other fashion.

The original version is still out there and quite well seeded if you want to start with something smaller, and I want to make a major plug for another recent torrent = HISTORY OF IRELAND IN SONG VERSION 3. A helluva lot of work went into that one.

I've included a directory listing outside the .RAR portion, so you can see if this collection is worth your time. Here is the basic listing of the bands, keep in mind that many songs are in the MISC file since that many bands didn't have enough to merit their own file.

AAA Misc (hundreds of assorted cuts & Covers)
Alex Beaton                                                
Athen Rye                                                  
Bagpipes                                                   
Battering Ram                                              
Bawdy Beggar Girls                                         
Ben Holmes                                                 
Bing Crosby                                                
Blarney Lads                                               
Carbon Leaf                                                
Celtic Tenors                                              
Celtic Woman                                               
Charlie & the Bhoys                                        
Chieftains                                                  
Christy Moore                                              
Clancy Brothers                                            
Clannad                                                    
Corries                                                    
Danny Boy Album                                            
Dublin City Ramblers                                       
Dublin Cowboys                                             
Dublin Ramblers                                           
Dubliners                                                  
Eire Og                                                    
Forever Plaid                                              
Frank Harte and Donal Lunny - 1798 The First Year           
Gaelic Storm                                               
Generic Irish Sing-along albums                            
Great Big Sea                                              
Irish Celtic Punk (Flogging Molly, Dropkick, etc)                                         
Irish Descendents                                          
Irish Rovers                                               
Joanie Madden - Songs of the Irish Whistle                  
Johnny Logan and friends - The Irish Connection            
Judy Collins                                               
Juice O' The Barley                                        
King's Galliard                                            
Loreena McKennitt                                          
Mary O'Hara - Songs Of Ireland                             
Naughty Nymphs                                            
O´ Riada Sa Gaiety                                         
Orthodox Celts                                             
Paddy Noonan                                               
Planxty                                                    
Pogues                                                     
Quilty                                                     
Roger Whittaker                                            
Seamus Kennedy                                           
Sean O'Neill Band                                         
Sinead O'Connor                                            
Songs Of Ireland 1-3                                      
Spailpin                                            
Tears For Beers
the Tommy Makem Songbag                         
Three Irish Tenors                         
Wolfe Tones