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Some questions about Soulseek (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello pirates! I've recently started high school, which means that I now get money from the state, which also means that my parents no longer pay for my Spotify premium. I could probably afford it, but I'd rather save my money, so I've been looking into different ways of obtaining music for free.

One thing that really caught my eye is Soulseek. It seems like a good option for my needs + I could set up a server on my raspberry pi to be able to access all of my music from anywhere.

My biggest concern is getting in trouble with the authorities, because my parents would kill me if the cops came knocking on our door due to me pirating stuff. So I was wondering whether it would be worth it to spend some money on a VPN (and which one), or if I should just raw dog it and not use a VPN at all? I live in Sweden, and I haven't found any cases of people getting arrested for pirating music, but it is technically illegal afaik.

Thankful for any answers!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If the only reason you want to use soulseek is to save money, then paying for a VPN wouldn't work out that much cheaper than Spotify premium as far as I'm aware. As you are appear rather paranoid, perhaps a modded Spotify frontend would be best.

However, a VPN isn't really necessary for soulseek as it is ptp.

But, I would actually (obviously) recommended switching to soulseek as that allows you to build your own library of lossless audio files, which then of course involves spending large sums of money on high capacity drives but is a fun hobby to have.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Use a VPN if you want to be safe. slsk is p2p. If you don't want to pay for a VPN, there's a lot of ways to get music via DDL.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I love that young people are still discovering soulseek just like I did back in the day. It gives me hope for the future of humanity.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd say yes VPN, even if piracy were legal I don't need my peers knowing my IP. For slsk port forwarding is more important than it is for torrenting as well, so I'd reccomend one that lets you do that, like AirVPN (who I will also soon be switching to, Mullvad the one I have now recently removed port forwarding, I'm just too poor to switch yet) or protonvpn.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Is there any reason to have port forwarding on a VPN if I'm only going to use Soulseek?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Because soulseek requires port forwarding.

If your port isn't forwarded you can only connect to those who's port is forwarded, effectively locking yourself out of peers who also don't have a port forwarded as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The protocol doesn't allow transmission with closed ports, so you can download but upload is impossibile.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you really want to pirate safely, I would suggest to use a YouTube downloader. In my phone I just use new pipe (it can download just the audio).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not sure why this is downvoted. yt-dlp is a great way to get music from YouTube, bandcamp, or other sites.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Maybe because YouTube isn't a good option if you're looking for good audio quality (same for Bandcamp's free streams). OP didn't specify though.