
Soulseek is still alive - subbz
http://www.soulseekqt.net/news/
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ilitirit
I still use this. It's useful for stuff like live mixes that disappeared off
the face off the internet. There's usually someone out there that has a copy
in their mp3 collection.

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otisfunkmeyer
This brings back so many good memories I can hardly believe it. It brings a
very small but very real tear to my eye.

This would be like waking up one day and realizing audiogalaxy was still
there. Soulseek was my favorite music transfer program for a couple years
there in the early 2000's and then I forgot all about it. I always loved the
community aspect of it.

It reminds me of the very very old EFNet IRC days when I was briefly in one of
the first MP3 kr3wz lol. #snes #warez5 stand up!

Today is a good day, today is a very fine day.

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kubiiii
This brings back memories. Soulseek was(is) super efficient. I remember
directly browsing users HDs and sending message to them to congratulate them
on their taste. I'd definitely try it out again.

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mahmoudimus
This is awesome. I was just browsing some of my old files and I found a folder
called Soulseek with a ton of old DJ mixes that I couldn't find anywhere
except there.

Glad this project is still running. Definitely some gems on there.

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mxfh
A Soulseek WebRTC client:
[https://github.com/jellea/soulseek.js](https://github.com/jellea/soulseek.js)

A ClojureScript rewrite of soulseek.js:
[https://github.com/jellea/muuuuu](https://github.com/jellea/muuuuu)

an android client:
[https://github.com/thylakoid/GoSeek](https://github.com/thylakoid/GoSeek)

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JonnieCache
By all accounts it's still full to the brim with incredibly rare records that
you can't get anywhere else.

It has the niche for music that doesn't exist as part of any kind of album:
unreleased tracks, demos, dubplates and so forth. I guess that's why its
napster-style architecture still works. There's a lot of trading that goes on
between individual users.

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pcf
I'm sharing my collection of 52.000 songs on Soulseek, and it has always been
my default choice for downloading music in high quality.

It's truly an amazing project, and I really hope it will never disappear.

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binaryatrocity
I have the fondest memories of SoulSeek. I used to spend hours a day searching
for rare tracks/albums (was really into obscure metal back then) and
tirelessly organizing my library :D

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agumonkey
Very very happy to hear this since there was some very very dedicated music
lovers with lengthy collections of rare material.

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viame
Oh nice, haven't used this in years but will download right now, bring back
some memories :')

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hershel
Is the preservation of rare music is based on what users choose to keep, or is
there algorithm keeping stuff in the background ?

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greenpresident
Storage is completely decentralized and happens on a per user basis. Content
is curated by every user themselves. It's really what makes soulseek so great
to me: Once you find a network of people who have a similar taste in music,
you can browse their collections or ask them for suggestions.

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devindotcom
Sure. I've been using it since the early days and it's still excellent.

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jpswade
Last I heard of Soulseek it was virus riddled and tracks were incorrectly
named.

What it needs is a layer of trust, but unfortunately that probably means
accountability, which is often a no-go for Soulseek users.

~~~
pcf
Viruses? Never happened to me.

Incorrectly named tracks, sure. But not that often, and in any case I use
Discogs.com and Musicbrainz Picard to get the titles correct.

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sushijain
Wow..blast from the past. Loved this app

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gmork
I've been a user since 2003 :)

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jpprime
Soulseek is the biggest thing I miss about Windows. Is there a decent Mac
version somewhere?

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devindotcom
Google around a little and check the forums - there are a couple versions,
none great but they do get you access. I think I use "SoulSeeX"? I'm primarily
on Windows so I can't remember exactly.

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face_melt
It still surprises me when I hear this, but then again, I've been a user since
the early days. I think the main reason that it's survived is the user
community. There are vast treasure troves of (usually) high quality music a
query away. I still hit up the chat rooms occasionally for listening
suggestions.

If you're not into scouring trackers or music blogs for more "obscure" tastes,
or even if you used the program before it was ported to the QT framework, I
would recommend you check it out!

~~~
mahouse
The Qt port suffers from grave quality issues, imo. I still use the old
version.

~~~
pcf
On the Mac it works brilliantly. I don't know about the QT port on PC, but I
would assume it has surpassed the old client by now, after all these updates.

~~~
mahouse
I guess it's the same, because it's Qt anyway. The UI, for example, looked
very bad. But I tried it a while ago, maybe it has improved a lot since then.

On Linux, btw, I recommend Nicotine+.

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ppadron
Unfortunately the same thing can't be said about AudioGalaxy.

~~~
pit
Oh, man. Of course, Audiogalaxy was the greatest. The ability to queue songs
up from anywhere and have them waiting for you when you got home! To this day,
I think all song files should be in the format "artist - album.mp3"

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otisfunkmeyer
NO WAY! Artist - Song.mp3 !!! My entire collection is set up like this :)

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platz
Noo, take this post down - we don't want soulseek to get noticed!

~~~
svenkatesh
Yes! Security by obscurity works! Even though we know about it, there's no
chance people whose job it is to know about it, know about it! /s

~~~
rdn
Less likely to be litigated out of existence if the user base doesn't grow.

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norswap
So are eMule, Kazaa, Limewire (as Frostwire), Gnutella, Freenet, ...

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caractacus
eMule is suffering greatly and has been for the last few years from the lack
of decent central servers. Kad keeps ticking along but this is a network in
significant decline.

Kazaa? Not been around for years. Visit their homepage: "We thank you for your
interest in Kazaa. However we no longer offer a music service."

Older versions of Limewire still connect to Gnutella but the network is
unusable. Full of viruses and malware and very little decent content. One
thing the LimeWire devs did manage was to keep the network fairly free of
spam.

Frostwire - as someone else mentioned - is now a bittorrent client only and if
you want a bittorrent client, you're better off with uTorrent or something
else.

Gnutella - see above.

Freenet? Seriously? Yes, it's still there. Yes you may still be able to
download a few things on there but it has the same issues it always did. Slow.
Poor availability. You have to denote a portion of your own hard drive to
store who knows what (but possibly encrypted kiddie porn).

So how do people get music now if they're not using legitimate methods?
BitTorrent. MP3 download sites. Stream or rip off YouTube. But over the last
two years, the legitimate options have become - for the first time ever -
_better_ than the piracy experience. There's stuff on Spotify I've never found
on a single piracy site bar Oink and VK and the first of those is dead (though
What.cd is a good successor) and the second Russian which means it just
doesn't get considered by those in the West.

~~~
norswap
Sure, those are in poor shape. Is soulseek any better? (This is an honest
question I don't know the answer of, not a rethorical device.)

~~~
pcf
Soulseek is way better, and has always been.

It never went away, it has always been my number one choice for music
downloading, whether it's incredibly rare releases, or the most commercial
stuff I use for my DJ'ing.

Put simply, there's very little music you can't find on Soulseek, especially
when you use the "wish list" function and have the program auto search for you
at regular intervals.

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fwr
Alive and thriving - there's no better source for lesser known music. It has
replaced private music trackers for me completely, since the selection is
great and community is much less elitist.

~~~
cheeze
Better source than what.cd? I find that hard to believe.

~~~
pcf
There are just more people, plus the process of sharing tracks is easier than
on what.cd (no need to create torrents and write info), so you will always
find more stuff on Soulseek.

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MichaelTieso
Big fan of Soulseek here as well. As someone else mentioned, the community is
fantastic and the rare track and mixes they have is great.

I find it amazing that the early 2000's boom of Napster, Kazaa, Audiogalaxy,
etc are now all gone. I don't know a single person that downloads music
illegally but ten years ago that's what everyone did. The rise of iTunes,
Songza, Pandora, Last.fm, and so many others is proof of the industry adapting
to itself and doing it fantastically well. If only Hollywood would adapt and
see it the same way.

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caractacus
They're getting there in some places. Netflix is a tad popular in the US, here
and there.

Hollywood has two major issues that's aren't faced by the music industry. The
first is the theatrical release window: they're tied in to a business model in
pretty much every country worldwide where a significant chunk of their revenue
comes from a system that relies on limited availability via a single method.
This is changing, slowly. The window is shrinking and iTunes is being used to
push out online releases prior to the DVD hitting retail. But it's slow and
will not go away unless there is some seismic change.

The second issue is international releases. Unlike music, films needs to be
dubbed / subbed for releasing in many countries. This means staggered
availability for most films worldwide (less so for the massive blockbusters
which have resources thrown at them to ensure simultaneous release as much as
possible to maximise the return from publicity), staggered retail windows, etc
etc. It makes catch-all online release services more difficult to produce.

On top of all that? There are three (verging on two) major record labels
worldwide (plus a bunch of indies who often operate quite well together).
There are six major film studios in the US, seven if you count Lionsgate,
multiple major studios in many individual countries, and persuading all of
those to do the same thing at the same time and throw all of their films onto
a Netflix-style service in every country worldwide....? I'd rather fight a
hundred transformer sized ducks.

~~~
kristofferR
Netflix is horrible even if you disregard all the content and licensing
issues.

It's so sad it's almost funny, but I actually subscribed to Netflix purely to
watch House of Cards Season 2 - and had to download the pirate rips since
Netflix was way too resource intensive and dropping frames like crazy with the
HD quality stream.

My laptop, a 2011 Macbook Air, isn't exactly the fastest computer out there,
but it can watch 20Mbps+ 1080p x264 files in VLC and MPlayerX without any
issues at all. However, Netflix, due to their stupid Silverlight solution
couldn't even play 720P quality without stuttering a lot and losing
audio/video sync within a few seconds.

It's pretty sad that Popcorn Time, a torrent streaming desktop app built with
Node.js(!), with just a couple of weeks of unpaid open source development has
become a solution that is both prettier, faster and higher quality than what
Netflix has been able to do on the PC with years of development.

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andrewflnr
Are you sure that wasn't a bandwidth issue?

~~~
kristofferR
Yup. I've got 100/100 Mbps and the hidden stats were confirming that the
network wasn't the problem. I even tried pausing it and letting it buffer for
a long time, but it just started dropping frames and going out of sync as soon
as it switched to HD.

It would also have paused the video and displayed "buffering" if that were the
problem.

