Frequently Asked Questions

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Here are some of the most commonly asked questions about this site. If you have a question that isn't answered here, post a message.

What's this site all about?

For most of Loveline's history, Westwood One (the studio that produced Loveline) did not keep studio recordings of the show. Amateur recordings from thousands of fans across the country are the only known copies of the show. Over the years, an underground community of Loveline fanatics has sprung up. They record, collect, and trade shows with one another.

lovelinetapes.com is a community effort to collect, organize, and share recordings of these old Loveline radio shows. The site makes them searchable, distributes them in an organized way, and encourages interaction between Loveline fans. The site launched in October 2009.

Which shows do you have?

We have shows recorded from radio broadcasts between 1989 and 2005, almost exclusively from the Adam Carolla era. Of the 3,185 shows indexed on the site, 2,047 ( 66.7 %) of them have recordings. Since we don't have a complete broadcast schedule from the early years of Loveline, it's likely that we have something like 30% of all shows broadcast from 1989 to 2005.

For legal reasons, we cannot post any shows after 2005. Westwood One makes those shows available on the official Loveline web site with a paid membership.

How can I help?

The best ways to contribute to lovelinetapes.com are to:

a) Send us tapes for missing or existing shows. We have the equipment to make the highest quality digital transfers.
b) Sign up (for free) and become a full-access user.
c) Add missing information for old shows (like hosts and guests) in the comments section so that we can properly organize the shows.
d) Log calls for shows so that they can be added to the index and searchable.
e) Add transcripts for shows (coming soon).
f) Share the site with others. You never know, sending someone in need to the right call might help them out.

I have some old Loveline shows on tape. What do I do with them?

Send them to Giovanni so that he can do a high-quality digital transfer. Giovanni has a full deck of expensive equipment for the highest quality digital transfers. His turnaround is quick and the resulting sound is exceptional. He can even pull material from damaged tapes.

Leave a message with Giovanni to arrange this. Because tapes are analog and degrade over time, Giovanni says that the sooner you send your tapes, the better.

I have some old Loveline shows already recorded on my computer. What do I do with them?

Contact us and let us know what you got. If you happen to have the original tapes for these shows, contact Giovanni. He will probably be able to create a higher quality transfer with his professional equipment than you can with standard consumer-grade equipment.

I can't log in! What do I do?

Did you click the link in the validation e-mail you got after signing up? You won't be able to log in until you do.

Did you lose the validation e-mail? You can have the site send you a new one. Click Having trouble? in the Password field at the top of the page, enter your e-mail address, and click the Send Validation button.

Forget your password? Click Having trouble? in the Password field at the top of the page, enter your e-mail address, and click the Send Password button.

If the above steps don't help and you continue to have problems, send us a private message on the Contact Us page with the e-mail address and password you are trying to log in with, and we will look into it.

Shows won't play for me! What do I do?

The site is supported on all major browsers.

Make sure you have the latest Flash player installed. If you still can't play shows, send us a private message on the Contact Us page with your platform (PC/Mac) and browser version, and we will look into it.

How can I download shows?

You need to sign up for an account, and you need to be logged in. Then, when you're on a show page, you should see a little download link underneath the audio player. Click it, and your show will start downloading.

Why don't you take all your shows and make a torrent so that people can download them that way?

The mission of this site is to collect, organize, and share recordings of old Loveline radio shows. This is done by carefully indexing user-submitted recordings, making them playable for anyone with a web browser, and encouraging user interaction on the site.

Creating a massive torrent does not support this mission. In addition, as higher-quality shows are added and new shows are discovered, the torrent would need to be updated with the latest material. We're already doing enough for free as it is.

How does the rating system work? What's with all the stars?

The site uses a Bayesian rating system, in which the highest-rated shows will be the ones with a high average rating and the most votes.

Black stars indicate a show's average rating on the site. Red stars indicate a specific user's rating, if you're viewing their user page. If you're logged in, you'll also see blue stars, which indicate your rating.

Who made this site?

lovelinetapes.com is a collaborative effort between three Loveline fans: Jeff (spinfly), Adam (unclepenny), and Giovanni (Giovanni). Here are their stories:

Jeff

I started listening to Loveline on the radio while at the University of Southern California in 1996. It was already a nationally syndicated radio show at that point but was still a mostly local Los Angeles phenomenon. Fascinated by the magic combination of Dr. Drew's analysis and the wit and street sense of Adam Carolla, I listened to it every night. Each show was a lesson in psychology, giving me new insights about myself and my peers and people in general. And listening to Adam and Drew handle other people's issues helped me address some minor (some would say major!) issues of my own.

I called the show once and got to talk to Adam for a few moments. For a documentary on our new campus television station, I was even able to get into the Westwood One studio to shoot some footage during one of the shows. After the shoot, they sent me a promotional photo autographed by Adam and Dr. Drew.

As I listened to these shows in my dorm room, I felt compelled to start recording them as I listened to them. I felt like I was listening to a special combination of wisdom and comedy, and I couldn't bear the thought of not preserving it somehow. I found that a whole show would fit perfectly onto a 90-minute tape if you hit pause every time they went to commercial. I ended up recording about 100 shows before graduating and moving somewhere where I couldn't listen to Loveline anymore.

I happened to tune in on November 3, 2005 to learn that it was Adam's last show. I tried desperately to call in, because I wanted to thank him for helping people like myself, but I couldn't get through. How else could I thank him? I started thinking about putting together a web site with all of my recorded shows, organizing them and sharing them with the public as a way to "give back" to the community. But I never got around to it.

In July 2009, Adam (my collaborator, not Carolla) found a reference to the Loveline footage I shot on my web site. An avid collector of Loveline material, he sent me an e-mail. He mentioned an archive of recorded shows that he and his friend Giovanni had collected, and I told him about my box of tapes and my web site idea. Finally I had some help, not to mention a much larger selection of shows! Giovanni insisted that I send him my box of tapes to transfer, and I insisted that he help me with the site. The result of our efforts is lovelinetapes.com

I hope people find lovelinetapes.com entertaining, educational, and helpful, just as Loveline was for me.

Adam

I started listening to Loveline in the 6th grade. All I had to listen with was a cheap clock radio. I would put it under my ear like a pillow and listen to the entire show that way so I wouldn’t get in trouble at for staying up so late. I later got a CD player with a digital tuner and headphones.

Sadly KRock in Syracuse, NY dropped the show in early 2004 and I was forced to stop listening. I discovered some of the low bit rate shows on file sharing programs a few months later and started downloading them. I had dial up at the time and wasn’t able to download the higher quality stuff from the other websites. Eventually we got higher speed Internet and I downloaded as many shows as I could get my hands on.

That wasn’t enough though. I knew I was missing out on the early years of Loveline and decided to search the interwebs for any old shows people may have. I’ve worked with a number of tape traders who would trade me their old Loveline shows for other interviews and bootlegs they were seeking. Several generous sources (such as Jeff, the creator of this site) have come forward over the years and donated cassette tape recordings they made for themselves years back to be transferred to mp3 files by Giovanni. Eventually I hope we complete the entire archive.

Giovanni

I discovered LoveLine back in 1996 when the MTV show premiered it was the 2nd month of 7th grade and I had just turned 13 a few days before the 1st ep, at the time I watched a fair amount of mtv so I caught the show by chance and found it to be very compelling.

Immediately I was aware of Adam's humor and the unique rapport between him and Drew, the show would air 5-7 nights a week with marathons on the weekend that would be 2-6 episodes from 11pm/12m-5am, that whole November and December of 1996 all the memories I have in some way involve the LoveLine mtv show.

Shortly after I discovered the TV show I discovered the much superior radio show which at the time was syndicated on 100.7 the buzz in Wa state, this must have been sometime in 1997 or so.

I then began archiving mp3's of the show in late 98 and have been doing it ever since, I have been working in and around various online communities since the late 90's, I remember exchanging old mp3's on the original Napster, Audiogalaxy, too many gnutella clients to name and many other different P2P programs, I've been using the DC++ hub since the early days and would frequent all the old LL ftp's (kevin U's, lovelinehamandcheez, etc.) I used to love downloading from the Lovelinearchive (RIP) and worked on Lovelinecentral (RIP) with Adam D. and rush before it was closed down.

In the past few years my efforts have been dedicated to finding old tapes and then transferring them, I have a unique setup for the process and very specific settings, it results in the best sounding shows yet to be released, It takes me about 3-4 weeks on average for 100 shows but I have done 200 in less than 6 weeks before, these old fan made recordings are the last hope we have of ever completing the archive, if you're reading this and have any tapes please email me ASAP.

Loveline is deeply woven into the last 13yrs of my life and no matter how much I hear the old eps I never can seem to get enough nor does it ever get old to me.

Are you making any money off of this site?

Not a cent. In fact, it costs us money to keep the site up and offer free, unlimited downloads of the thousands of MP3 files in our collection.

It has been our goal from the start to post these Loveline shows as a public service, not to make a profit. Furthermore, we are trying to avoid any legal issues by not charging users to register for the site, keeping the site ad-free, and refusing donations. We appreciate the offers to donate, but we can't accept anything right now. We're not allowed to. Thanks, anyway.

If you come across another "Loveline" site that charges for anything or even asks for donations, we recommend that you report it to Westwood One customer service. It's against the law to profit off the sale of property you don't own.

Do you have recordings of "Loveline" on MTV, "The Man Show", "The Adam Carolla Show", "Too Late with Adam Carolla", Adam's podcasts, or any other Adam Carolla material?

No.

How can I show my appreciation?

Uh Oh...