Just cracks me up when normies think that any of these things actually has access to “basically anything”. Not everything is even on the internet period

Curious what you don’t get? There’s always people will to make a quick buck even if it’s risky and there’s always lazy people who will pay money for convenience (hence why paid streaming is even a thing)

It does but I guess it’s only private right now. SlavArt doesn’t do it or maybe you can request what you want on there?

If you have cabal and able to maintain ratio (yeah BTN is ratio less) you don’t need Usenet

But thats such a small proportion of people. Usenet is what I recommend to entry level people who want top tier access but aren’t will to spend time/effort/networking but will spend money m

I’ve found DC++ public hubs garbage. The private ones are amazing but near impossible to get into if you’re not already familiar. What hubs are you recommending that are better than Soulseek?

You don’t own the music so it can be edited/taken away as desired by the DSP

Also me personally very little of what I listen to is on DSPs and a lot isn’t even on YouTube but I recognize this as an extreme outlier

Private trackers really aren’t masters of op sec. They thrive through security through obscurity which the worst kind of “security”. And generally even fail at that (PTP, BTN, RED, OPS are so widely known)

That said I use them and I also don’t use a VPN so I just take that risk. It’s up to you

IP2 definitely sounds intriguing as truly (or close to) anonymous peer to peer

You can use without port forwarding. Others without open ports won’t be able to upload to or download from you and give versa. There’s a sticky on the Reddit explaining this

If you can’t forward ports Soulseek will still work okay. Don’t let that stop you from joining

Music piracy isn’t dead but it’s a shell of what it was. You can see even here most people would rather just stream

Soulseek needs more users though as the proportion of locked file users keeps increasing

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

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.

Any specific server you recommend? And is there anything on windows like mldonkey where you can search call the servers at once?

Seems like another blow and a step closer to the death of public trackers for many. For us hardcore pirates we don’t give a shit but the big corps are gonna be very happy. Many people should probably just move on to Usenet

They’re going hard still

That’s good. Maybe it’s a less toxic scene

You haven’t run into traders or hoarders in that circle?

DC++ does it but it’s even more selective than PTs. Maybe someone on here can start a hub for all the members here

DC++ and Soulseek gang here plus some personal contacts and sites mainly DDL

Yeah I like the smell of my own farts. I got PT access too but I try to minimize use these days. Usenet is great but I have too much ego to pay for anything currently outside of internet connection and storage.

Why’d you tag them? You were able to see who downvoted you?

If you wanna make money off of it you become more of a bootlegger than a pirate with a separate set of ethos. It’s going to put a much bigger target on your back both legally and from non legal entities and in the case some shit does go down you’ll have much less support/empathy. This is with the mindset you’re out to make a profit not donations to run servers etc if you get big, even if it’s to just do it full time. And you’re not going to get much support if that’s the case here