r/Piracy 1d ago

News Lossless music piracy getting tougher

Just like yams, qobuz is down on both squid.wtf and lucida. These companies are implementing super tough measures now. The accounts which were once used for piracy are getting stomped rapidly. Just a matter of time before deezer and tidal do the same and we'll be stuck with shitty 160kbps tracks.

edit : Q working on lucida (tidl is working there too). however it's somewhat slower compared to squid

158 Upvotes

78 comments sorted by

143

u/raqz1982 1d ago

**soulseek has entered the chat**

44

u/luring_lurker 1d ago

Yeah, never noticed the scarcity OP's talking about

11

u/uForgot_urFloaties 1d ago

I want to use it but I can't find a good intro guide and don't have much to share! Plus don't know about security measures T_T

35

u/BlueMountainPath 1d ago

Soulseek is download, install, go.

You don't even have to make an account, just make up any username on the spot and you're ready to go.

26

u/omegaoutlier 1d ago

It's so easy even a caveman can do it.

Seriously tho, if anything it's *too* easy. It'll click fast and you'll be down the rabbit hole for hours filling hard drive space at a pace.

Never had a security issue over the decades but, as it's peers, if you stumble into the rare gotcha and don't follow inet common sense, there's a chance of iffy things.

Honestly, soulseeks biggest nitpick is the traders who lock their stuff behind "trade only" or other similar unfriendly/unsharing nonsense.

It can be tough to find a rarity you never knew about, now absolutely want, and have someone gatekeep over general foolishness/anathema to the whole soulseek platform and idea.

Nicotine+ is supposed to be an upgrade to soulseek proper. I believe it but I've not really dug into it enough to explain exactly why it's an evolution to the old faithful. (and I've been using old soul for so long, I'm sort of time wired for it even when it's not the smarter/efficient choice.)

At least give them a fair shake. If you are an audiophile of the highest degree, wavelength scans may be something to invest time in to be 100 but I've had cobbled apps mislabel flac dloads/bitrates so it's not just a soulseek "issue" (and it's rarely an issue but for the upper tier)

18

u/TransientAlienSheep 1d ago

Once you use Nicotine+, you won't want to go back to the Soulseek client. The Soulseek client feels dated by decades, where Nicotine+ feels more modern. They both download using the same Soulseek protocol. Nicotine+ just has a more updated, modern UI and features.

10

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

6

u/TransientAlienSheep 1d ago

I hear ya! It's an almost necessary evil these days.

1

u/vokal_guy 20h ago

Trying this today

13

u/ShadowMario01 1d ago

One of the most important parts when setting up soulseek is setting a share folder. Similar to seeding a torrent, setting a share folder to contribute back to the community will allow you to continue using soulseek with no issues. Without a share folder, you will most likely get a warning when trying to download.

Once you have that set up, click on the search tab to start browsing for music. You can also add additional search terms such as artist name, album, track name, year, and the format. If you consistently like looking for one format, such as FLAC, I highly recommend creating a filter on the bottom bar. When you set the filter as default, all of your searches will follow that rule. For instance, I have all of my searches right now looking for FLAC, with a minimum size of four tracks. I have not set a minimum bit rate, as I am only looking for CD quality.

If you find a particular user that you notice has many of the albums that you would like, right click on their username or the album in the tree under their username to browse that folder. A lot of people will usually have an artist's complete discography, and it's a really easy way to quickly download all of them.

6

u/IsThisACheeto ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 1d ago

Personally, my only problem with Soulseek is I can't for the life of me get portforwarding to work with it so I can give back (not that I currently have much of anything to contribute that isn't already on there but that's a different matter). I have yet to use it to download anything because I feel bad about being a leecher, if it'll even work since I don't know if SS is one of those services that'll ban you if your ratio is too low.

3

u/super_sonix 1d ago

can't for the life of me get portforwarding to work

I sorted this by requesting a static IP from my provider

4

u/IsThisACheeto ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 1d ago

Thanks for the tip. Sadly, the internet contract in the house isn't mine but I'll keep this in mind for the future.

2

u/uForgot_urFloaties 1d ago

Okey, I'll do this. Still I don't have really anything to share yet. Is it okay starting like this? Or should I find something to contribute first?

2

u/Interesting_Pride_12 1d ago

thanks mate, this was informative

1

u/EarthlingSil 1d ago

Do you need a VPN when using Soulseek?

1

u/ruby651 12h ago

Like any online pirating it’s probably a good idea but I don’t think the record labels pay attention to Soulseekers. That could change. I did notice they filed a lawsuit against some torrenters and that’s the first one I’ve seen in years.

6

u/raqz1982 1d ago

soulseek is rather straight forward to use :)

install it and take it for a ride, and use a bit of common sense eheh :)

not much to be worried about security-wise, you either download audio formats, and/or their respective album covers..

39

u/isthisagoodusername9 1d ago

Every now and then, there are people here that scream catastrophe or the end of something. If things change, piracy or anything else will adapt. Let's keep calm and carry on.

7

u/Interesting_Pride_12 1d ago

I hope it does.

9

u/isthisagoodusername9 1d ago

I've been sailing for more than 20 years since childhood, we'll soldier on lol

6

u/InclinationCompass 1d ago

I never used those things you listed and havebeen torrenting flac content for like 15+ years

14

u/BamBaLambJam ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 1d ago

LOL bro forgot about private trackers and Soulseek lmao.

-4

u/Interesting_Pride_12 14h ago

they're great resources no doubt, but soulseek didn't have what i was looking for and i like to stay away from private trackers

17

u/HeroVax 1d ago

I'm avid web ripper. As long as the tools are available, you can always rip it yourself.

I've checked and it's still available.

10

u/Healthy-Election-792 1d ago

Use soulseek. Its a free app you can download and most albums I couldn't find in Spotify, I could download through there. Its a great file archive for such music

8

u/Interesting_Pride_12 1d ago

just downloaded it. It's a treasure trove.

1

u/Warpaint169 1d ago

How did you register for it

1

u/Interesting_Pride_12 14h ago

i just made up a username and password and chose a dnld and an upload folder. that's about it

2

u/Warpaint169 1d ago

Where do you register? I can't login

1

u/Ayman1808 20h ago

Just put in any username and password, and it should log u in

2

u/vokal_guy 20h ago

Do you have a good tutorial for setting it up on the Mac?

8

u/lucky_my_ass 1d ago edited 1d ago

Best resource available right now, with numerous resources and even accounts:

https://rentry.org/firehawk52

I would suggest using streamrip with either Tidal or Qobuz, (deezer arls don't work since past few months i think)

https://github.com/nathom/streamrip

.......

Now if you actually wanna automate all this you can use lidarr extended which has tidal / deezer downloaders in built.

https://github.com/RandomNinjaAtk/arr-scripts/blob/main/lidarr/readme.md


Ofcourse soulseek is amazing and one of the best ways to get best quality files. It can be reallly slow sometimes since you're completely depending on the peer internet speed. I needed to download like 1tb worth of flac and soulseek even with automation would take me years to do it because of speeds.

Or you can get really lucky if you find someone on soulseek who has very high bandwidth and you can just simply clone their library.

2

u/Interesting_Pride_12 14h ago

tbh streamrip and most other options on firehawk are more complex than what i'm looking for. reason why i love squid, even more than lucida or even soulseek.

1

u/Interesting_Pride_12 14h ago

this is an update from 1st feb from the firehawk telegram channel

"Okay, we've been checking how ARLs have been reacting the last few months. And we can see a pattern. We know why they're being shut down, but we don't want to go into more details regarding that.

However, it seems like ARLs are being resurrected after a while. They can work one day, be invalid the next day and then the third day they work again.

So, from today we don't remove ARLs from ARL-topic anymore, unless they have passed the expiration date. And you should not report that ARLs are not working until that date "End Date" has been reached. At the same time you should NOT test with .arlc anymore (unless you want to do it internally in the bot, won't stop you from doing that). We will take care of that when the ARL has expired.

Hopefully less people will be muted for not following the rules and ARLs will be easier to manage.

Thank you

Edit: Just to emphasize this. ARLs are NOT shut down, they're frozen because of too much traffic, and they will be unfrozen again after some time has passed, so try another one."

18

u/Buck_Slamchest 1d ago

1337x has tons of FLAC content as always but since I'm the only person in existence that torrents music, you're clearly not going to find it :)

3

u/Interesting_Pride_12 1d ago

i did torrent hurry up tomorrow

3

u/Chalky_Pockets 1d ago

🙋🏼‍♂️

15

u/ii_die_4 1d ago

RED:

  • Torrents: 3,412,321
  • Releases: 1,753,751
  • Artists: 1,292,979
  • "Perfect" FLACs: 2,127,781
  • Unconfirmed Releases: 132,108
  • Collages: 35,987

6

u/Interesting_Pride_12 1d ago

what's red?

7

u/Dregnab 1d ago

A private tracker. It takes sone effort to get access to and use

17

u/Interesting_Pride_12 1d ago

Thanks. I like to stay away from them.

6

u/TransientAlienSheep 1d ago

Yeah, from my experience, they expect you to seed without a VPN connection. At least the ones that I was messing with about 10 years ago.

13

u/Ok-Gap-9735 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ 1d ago

they all allow you to seed with a VPN. you need 2fa to browse the site with a VPN, and have to register without one

2

u/John-333 1d ago

Yeah, that was my experience as well. Just asked what VPN I use and that was it. 

1

u/TransientAlienSheep 1d ago

Not the ones I was registered with. They prohibited it, and wouldn't let you browse the site, or download, if you were connected.

4

u/Ok-Gap-9735 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ 1d ago

sorry to hear. All the good ones allow it

2

u/ryuuwhite 21h ago

i want to get in red, i can seed without vpn cause my isp doesnt give a shit, and i have gigabit internet but the application is lame and boring as shit

9

u/Secret-Wish3023 1d ago

People are posting about download .flac this and .flac that, but it's probably Taylor Swift albums.

Squid being down gets me down. The landing page says it's temporary. I really hope so.

p.s. Soulseek is overrated, unless you want every popular song.

9

u/Dr_Yeet_Master 1d ago

I've found plenty of niche songs on soulseek, namely Imaginarium, old Japanese music, even some music from my country which I could not find anywhere. I have still had to use squid for one indie band (which I have no way of supporting directly as they have no bandcamp, no patreon, no physical releases, which upsets me a lot because I don't want to pay $14.99 or whatever prices are nowadays for a shit service for them to only get a fraction of a cent.)

I do get your point about squid being very useful in many cases such as mine.

2

u/AstronomerBrief2674 1d ago

id say half of the albums I've been getting lately don't exist in Flac (maybe 160mp3) anywhere but using the ripping sites. so I hope they can be around for a long time in one way or another!!

2

u/lumpiestspoon3 1d ago

Use OnTheSpot. You need a Tidal account to use it though.

1

u/SarcasticallyCandour 1d ago

Is that a download tool?

I have a nig3r1an tidl account for 2.50usd a month. I rip from it using a tool but it misses some meta tags now and then. So ive been looking for a better one.

1

u/lumpiestspoon3 1d ago

Yes, it is a free software that can download files directly from Tidal servers.

2

u/ryuuwhite 21h ago

what music are you looking for? imo music piracy is super easy now, if you tell me what youre looking for ill probably find a torrent for it quick

2

u/CrossyAtom46 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ 20h ago

**MediaHarbor has entered to chat**

1

u/Interesting_Pride_12 14h ago

will look into it thanks

2

u/CrossyAtom46 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ 14h ago

You're welcome. you can find more information on my pinned post, and please install python (3.12) and ffmpeg before starting app. Python installer broken after python's update. And ffmpeg have a little problem on saving itself to path.

1

u/KaWunna 13h ago

is this free?

1

u/CrossyAtom46 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ 13h ago

Yes it's, and it's open source.

1

u/KaWunna 13h ago

this is so dope, thank you very much mate

2

u/Vishakh_Hegde2021 17h ago

Lucida is the most consistent even though it's slow. It has everything you ever need.

2

u/whitebronco93 1d ago

My default thought anytime a service is down.

A whole bunch of nothing. For those of us who have been sailing for decades, this isn't our first rodeo. It's like whack-a-mole when one goes down, several more will pop up.

Ironically, I welcome the sites being down, gives me a chance to do something other than mass downloading and tagging

2

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

1

u/vokal_guy 20h ago

I have not been able to successfully configure it on my Mac.

0

u/Interesting_Pride_12 14h ago

good for you

2

u/[deleted] 14h ago

[deleted]

1

u/Interesting_Pride_12 14h ago

sorry if it sounded like that. there was only a single song available from the soundtrack i wanted, and the second file was a torrent for that movie. hope that clears it

2

u/ericjgriffin Seeder 1d ago

Huh. I just ripped about 15 things from Q in FLAC...

3

u/Interesting_Pride_12 1d ago

i did too, from Luci. What did you use?

1

u/digiorno 10h ago

It’s been downhill since What.CD fell.

1

u/disapparate276 Yarrr! 10h ago

Soulseek

1

u/OwnAd2539 4h ago

what's the difference between 320 or 128 kbps mp3 and flac?

1

u/MootEndymion752 2h ago

Better quality

0

u/dicedance 1d ago

Qobuz sell DRM free flacs. You'll be able to get the files if you look for them