I’ve just started using Soulseek and it’s great. I want to make sure that I’m being a good neighbour on it - do I need to do anything to ensure that my files are available for others to download? And do I need to structure directories e.g Artist name > Album name or does it work off metadata?
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I use Nicotine+ as my client. You nailed it on the file structure. I also run all my files through Picard to make sure everything is all good.
As far as ensuring that your files are available for download, you’ll have to check/set the permissions for the drive/folder where they’re stored.
As far as being a good neighbour - make your files available and communicate. (I honestly don’t understand why folks make tracks “private.”)
This is my pet fucking hate. Within the genre I download / share so many people have all their files private and they want you to give them shit like bandcamp vouchers and stuff like that to have access to their locked files. It fucking boils my piss and it goes against the whole point of piracy as I see it.
I purposefully block all these fucking cunts, all my files are wide open to everyone and I am constantly getting a lot of new releases so if they want to lock their files they can’t have the privilege of sharing in my stuff, utter pieces of shit.
Exactly.
So far, I’ve been able to find pretty much everything without issues but the amount of private files that come up is crazy. The few I haven’t found, I’ve been able to download from SoundCloud.
I’ve had some folks switch their files to private while I was downloading. I ban them.
Compared to others out there, my collection isn’t big, but all of my files are shared.
A friend of mine kept all his music in the same folder, including music he created. Prevention of theft might be a reason to mark as music, although this is a very niche use case.
Prevention of theft might be a reason to mark as private, although this is a very niche use case.
What a hilarious point of view considering the circumstances
Saying ‘prevention of theft’ is a poor suggestion on my end and an incorrect depiction of his motives and usage of Soulseek. I can’t say for sure really, he passed away in 2021 so I’ll never know his motives. I tried to think of a reason why someone might mark something private and that’s what I ended up with. I probably should have thought this through better.
He used a lot of samples for his music using multitracks, the releases from artists meant specifically for remixing and sampling and I believe searching for multitracks from lesser known artists was his main use for Soulseek, basically networking, not piracy, and that he also had poor file and project management?
I’m not sure how to convey the connection that I saw in my head. I probably should have left this post alone.
You probably have to set somewhere which folder(s) you want to be discoverable.
Regarding directory structure, Soulseek search only uses file names as far as I as know. So having a consistent naming structure certainly helps. Some tools like the fantastic MusicBrainz Picard might help!
Structured folders also helps since you can download whatever folder a specific song is in so typically the folder would be the album title with the artist one level higher.
The search uses filenames and parent folders.
I only have slskd, so I’m not sure if it’s different, but folder structure should have artist > album, but outside of that it doesn’t matter much. My folder names all contain musicbrainz ids for use in jellyfin, but I’ve had plenty of uploads.
my folder structure is like:
└── genres ├── Acapellas ├── Afrobeat ├── Ambient ├── BASSSSSSSSSSSSSS ├── Bollywood ├── Breakbeat ├── Chutney ├── Country ├── Dancehall ├── DUBSTEPand people download my files just fine, sometimes they just download entire folders since I organize by genre, not artist.
I’m going to try and do this… but I have like 14 iPod classics worth of music to genre… Time to break out the old MusicBrainz Picard, I guess, just to make sure all the metadata is right. I have some wild stuff, too, like German Beatles songs and weird classical piano I’ve never heard of.
I was a little leery of how Soulseek works, so I backed out last second. I’ve never been trustful of the whole folder sharing thing, even on LAN. I’m going to go for it, though. The world should hear the weird stuff and the good songs I’ve ripped off old iPods.
Concerning how soulseek works, as I understand it, it’s basically like the bittorrent protocol, just another peer-to-peer sharing protocol.
As to your collection, share away! You never know how far the happiness can go when the right collection is discovered!
Haven’t gotten around to it just yet, but I did tag all the music with the proper metadata. I can’t rip anything off my iPod 1st and 2nd gens from my collection yet, but they’re stuffed full of music. I just need the proper firewire, but they seem to be more expensive than the units…
I need to order the music by genre folders now. Today I just got the EddieVPN client for Nobara working. I didn’t realize it was as easy as going to the Eddie site and getting the RPM; I’ve been too spoiled with the Arch AUR having everything I need in one place.
I’m almost there, though. I’ll have the music up soon.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot firewire was a thing haha, glad that didn’t catch on. Hope you can get those tunes somehow, I know I wish I still had my music collection from my old mp3 players, or even the ipod shuffle and 1st gen nano I used to rock back in the day.
On nice, I went with airvpn too, and also use Nobara, what a coincidence?!
Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of firewire, but back in the day it was actually pretty nice. 1.5A @ 30v was pretty nuts back then. I had a PC filled with pirated music I got from LAN parties in high school. No idea where that music went… probably destroyed in a Windows reinstall.
lol! I took a Linux class a long time ago and learned on Damn Small Linux. I came back to it years later with Pop!_OS then moved to Arch where I stayed for 2 years. Went to NixOS for a while.
But I never gave Fedora the time it deserved, so as an afterthought I tried it after I messed up my Arch system (yeeted my .local folder by accident). Went with Nobara for the ease of setup for gaming. I didn’t think I’d stay here, but its just too good.
RIP to all the music we lost due to unintended carelessness 🫡
Yeah, I pretty much had a similar linux pathway, started with kubuntu -> ubuntu -> arch (manjaro, then endevour os) -> Nobara. I was afraid of NixOS so I avoided it, might try it one day if I’m feeling spicy.
I’ve yeeted entire boot partitions and learned the hard way not to mess with what I can’t handle haha.
what music client do you use? I’m using mpd + rmpc right now, finally found something that’s customizable and powerful.
NixOS is well worth a try. If you know lua and json, its not too hard to pick up nixlang. I know neither and it only took me a few weeks to learn it. But once you get the hang of it, you can make a Linux reproducible on other systems. I made everything modular. GPU drivers for my old laptop? Imported nix module. Neovim? Imported nix module.
Yeah, I’ve done that. I’ve also deleted SCSI on my first Windows PC, lol. I still haven’t learned my lesson and mess with things I can’t handle. I was notorious for destroying my mother’s computers growing up. Then I learned to fix the things I broke.
As of right now, I use Audacious. Its my absolute favorite music client and all completely modular. You head to the plugins section and add what you want. It doesn’t even close to system tray without a plugin, so super customizable. If you can’t tell, I love modular things, lol.
For a quick music shuffle list with a really sleek design, Amberol is a really close second. Especially if you use GNOME, since its designed by default in the GNOME style. I use KDE, so I stick with Audacious, but I did enjoy my time with MPD on XFCE using a plugin designed for that DE. If I went back to Hyprland, I’d probably use MPD.
Nice, I think the world’s a little better when we can share our musical tastes. It’s definitely some work to get all that music organized, but I’ve been messing around with scripting with python and that can do a lot of the monotonous stuff like fixing filenames and what not.
And plus you never know, you’ll see songs being uploaded from your library and might think, “who the heck downloaded that?”, as I have many times. Every time I see unique music being downloaded, I feel a little better knowing eclectic music taste is still alive and well haha
I’m curious about your Bollywood folder. How big is it? I want to build a structured collection of old songs, and new ones too in as high quality as possible. I have nicotine+ installed but so far I couldn’t find anyone with an authoritative collection.
Ahh, my bollywood folder is fairly small right now, under 20 tracks. I tend to fill my library either with albums I’m curious about, or with songs I’ve heard and really want to replay for the future.
Once in a while, you can find people who have some decent collections, but since not everyone logs on at once, it’s sometimes a game of cat and mouse. If I can’t find it on the soulseek network, I’ll grab stuff from places like doubledouble, usually for things that are very new.
I think a VPN with port forwarding helps make your library discoverable on soulseek, but I don’t know enough to answer beyond that
Artist name, album name and track name should exist in file name or parent folder/s. Does not use metadata. You should open soulseeks port in your router. Maybe your router has upnp enabled, if so, you can enable upnp in your soulseek client and you are good to go. If you do not open the port, only users with open port can download from you. Remember to share the music you download too. Welcome to slsk :)
I use nicotine+, and you have to set the port you’re using, and either make sure it’s forwarded, or turn your router’s uPNP setting on so that nicotine will handle the port for you.
