Some questions about Soulseek

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!

000999,

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.

StickBugged,

You say that a VPN isn’t needed for Soulseek because it is ptp (peer to peer I assume?), but I thought that was the same “thing” as torrents use, which I’m fairly certain you pretty much need a VPN for?

antlion,
@antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

With a torrent you’re downloading from many unknown peers, one of which could be a rights holder lawyer who will log your IP and send a threatening letter to your internet service provider. With Soulseek you are downloading from only one peer.

With a torrent you are downloading and uploading chunks at the same time. With Soulseek you have options about what you share for upload. If you were to get in trouble legally on Soulseek, it would probably be for what’s in your shared library, not for what you downloaded.

However, it’s not super polite to download from others without sharing. Some users block uploading to peers who aren’t sharing anything. My advice would be to go to your local library and find a few rare CDs of local music. Rip them to MP3 at a good bitrate and share them. Or maybe classical music? I’m not a lawyer, but just think of what music you can share where the artist or record label isn’t going to sue you. Independent and smaller record labels are probably not going to sue you.

antonim,

Or maybe classical music? I’m not a lawyer, but just think of what music you can share where the artist or record label isn’t going to sue you.

Classical isn’t necessarily non-suable. You can share the sheet music Beethoven wrote, since he’s been dead for a long time and his work is in public domain, but each new performance and recording of a given composition is also copyrighted by the musicians(s), since they have invested creative effort into its realisation.

Not that you’d be remotely likely to get fined either way, unless the publishing label is very prestigeous, Warner Classics or maybe Deutsche Grammophon (though even then if you’re outside of US/UK or Germany I don’t think they’d care).

downhomechunk,
@downhomechunk@midwest.social avatar

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.

tricoro,

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).

antlion,
@antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

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

xspurnx,

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.

ArcaneSlime,

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.

StickBugged,

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

ArcaneSlime,

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.

Moonrise2473,

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

ArcaneSlime,

Not necessarily, I’m stuck without a port rn (thanks Mullvad) and I can still upload. The issue is if you don’t have a port forwarded you can only connect to people that do, but if you do have a port forwarded you can connect to everyone thus making your list of potential peers longer.

exelica,

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.

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