Most of the discussion and sources of content talk about movies and series.
I’ve been recently looking for psy and techno music, finding FLAC or WAV with active seeders feels like striking gold. It’s definitely been a while since I’ve looked for active torrent sites and it feels more barren than ever.
Edit: Thank you all for all that valuable information. The reddit group really wasn’t this helpful and valued making fun over adding real use able knowledge.
I have people download my files on soulseek/nicotine+ daily. Plus anyone that would pirate music probably already know how to rip it straight from streaming services.
I’d love to hear about any places to look for this. I sometimes want to download some favourite songs, just in case they go down on any music services or youtube.
The thing is not every popular or moderately popular song is on any streaming site. I’m a fan of 90s and 00s trance music, and there are some notable songs that aren’t available on any of the most popular paid services, or are available only in newer, re-recorded versions or remixes - some of them are available on Spotify, but not all. YouTube Music has such an advantage that you can listen not only to the songs uploaded by record labels, but also to countless additional songs available on YouTube, however most of the time they are in worse quality (AFAIK max audio bit rate in YT videos is 128 kbps). So while streaming services are now affordable and have very extensive audio library, they have some shortcomings that one can only fill with physical media or piracy.
I prefer there not being any lag in-between songs, which most streaming services have.
I usually use a streaming service like YouTube (through piped) to find new artists, then use soulseek to download their entire discography.
The problem with streaming is that the companies will eventually figure out new ways to squeeze every penny out of you. The once ‘free’ YouTube is now blocking adblocks, and Spotify requires DRM to be installed for it to function.
For me, piracy isn’t just about convenience or price, it’s mainly about control over the media I have.
I really like Apple Music. Actually supports lossless, unlike Spotify, and it just feels much more music focused. Spotify has become too bloated, and I view it more as a "sound" app than a music app.
I didn’t know about bandcamp. I’m gonna buy some albums there. The music is drm-free? I think that what bandcamp and itch.io are doing should be the future of the industry.
Yes, the music there is drm free. Keep in mind it’s not ALL music. It’s mostly music from independent artists. But they are the ones that need the most support. So go all in!
I personally like being able to use Spotify as my front-end, but it doesn't support flac. So I personally pay for Deezer's Flac option, I use xManager for listening to music on Spotify, and I have a script setup to automatically download all my liked Spotify songs from Deezer in lossless flac. It's not free by any means, but is the best/easiest way to download music I've found.
No, I just pay for Deezer Flac. xManager lets you use Spotify ad-free so the listening experience there is still 320 Kbps but I like the recommendation system better. it’s basically free Spotify premium. If I like any song a Spotify, spotify_sync will automatically grab it and download the flac file to my server. If I want to listen to lossless music, I just listen to my stored music using my Jellyfin server as a front-end. I never actually touch Deezer’s front-end at all.
Spotify is very affordable and provides pretty much all music on earth. I’m not interested in jumping through hoops to download songs if I can just conveniently stream them all from one legit service.
The state of video streaming is hardly Netflix’s fault. When every channel starts a subscription service and pulls it’s content from the others everyone loses.
Music streaming on the other hand is a complete experience on every service. It’s kind of a miracle tbh.
I actually built a stereo system that can play CDs recently and have stared buying used CDs to play on it.
I don’t really mind paying the equivalent of a drink or two from a vending machine for an album from a band that I like. And I get a neat physical thing that I can look at.
Yeah, I’m old enough to have grown up buying vinyl records. I want to buy a physical copy of the music I like.
The idea of depending on a streaming service to keep something available has always mades me uncomfortable, and given the recent removal of content from some of the studios’ services, it looks like my gut feeling was correct.
I mean vanced. I was too lazy to set up revanced and instead tried out NewPipe. I hate how I don’t have my really optimized suggested page on NewPipe but I get around that by using vanced to browse and then opening the video in NewPipe via the share button. A nice plus of NewPipe however is how my subscriptions now really are just the channels I really care about and not the 1000 random ones I’ve subbed to over the last few years.
Try revanced and that additional package recommended by them that allows it to use google account - I forgot the name - micro g perhaps? It works quite well for me at least. There are some discrepancies between homepage at home pc and phone, but it’s better than nothing or ads. Process was quite simple, download youtube apk, install revanced patcher and apply patch to the app.
Sounds very similar to the vanced installation. I might do this and keep NewPipe for subscribing to the really high quality channels and if google actually goes through with banning accounts that block adds I won’t be nearly as impacted :D
Locating, storing, labelling, and potentially hosting pirated music is just not something people wanna do. Plus music streaming isn’t a fragmented mess like video streaming is atm. I never stopped pirating tv and movies except for a brief window of time when Netflix was king, but music so easy and complete on every platform it isn’t worth it.
As the normies went to streaming it became more gatekept and toxic. I’m mainly familiar with the attitude of trades only or straight up selling tracks (eg groupbuys with kids paying thousands of dollars for some shitty Kanye mumble demo). The game didn’t used to be like that. The days of the blogs with mega/rapid share links are long gone
I mean you got all the stream rippers eg SlavArt which is super nice. Soulseek is still alright but getting taken over by traders. RED/OPS around but you can’t just waltz in and I’d argue they don’t compare to what.cd or even OinK. RuTracker still got stuff going on
But when you’re after actual rare stuff that you can’t just buy or stream it can be real tough nowadays. Scene archives can be nice but very hard to get access and it’s mostly mp3s.
Traders are hardly just on Soulseek. Most probably aren’t since it’s so accessible. Most of the traders I’ve seen on Soulseek anyways are scammers who are just sharing RED repositories. Or they’re on dc++ hubs where you can’t have locked files anyways
The best thing good users can do is remain on the client for the long term, ensuring traders remain a small minority. The next best thing they can do is PM traders regularly with requests to share. Make their sessions a pain in the butt due to the private chat alert going off routinely. ‘Hey trader, please open up to non-buddies temporarily, even at a crippled speed. I’d like two items from you. You know Soulseek is a sharing platform, right?’ Some may realise the ridiculousness of their position and co-operate.
Don’t stoop to their level by blacklisting, either. They will take that as endorsement of their behaviour. (Set 20kb/s down if it makes you feel better.)
‘Hey trader, please open up to non-buddies temporarily, even at a crippled speed. I’d like two items from you. You know Soulseek is a sharing platform, right?’
Will try it, thanks. Seems more civilized.
Don’t stoop to their level by blacklisting, either. They will take that as endorsement of their behaviour. (Set 20kb/s down if it makes you feel better.)
Thanks for the tip. That seems like a better punishment.
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