r/Soulseek

For context, I've been downloading albums for 4-5 months on here (at around 200 albums right now) searching and downloading albums only really from 24bit 44khz to 192khz and SACD DSD, unless albums aren't available in those qualities, using Spek and experimenting with software to find fakes in my collection etc. For listening i use FIIO KA11 DAC and Simgot EA500LM IEMs with foobar2000

Haven't really interacted with any users on the platform, so I'm not sure if my use of Soulseek is consistent with how most people use Soulseek, but respectfully and transparently i have a few questions. Genuinely just curious.

1. Why are users so block-happy and quick to ban?

2. Why does everyone despise AI?

3. Why are a high amount of users with large collections LGBT?

4. How do some people have such high upload speeds exceeding 100mb/s?

5. Why are the biggest collections on Soulseek made up of lower quality CD flac music?

6. Why are so many hi-res files just upscaled mp3s? If the whole point is to share music files and most people want them in high quality then why do people go through the effort to upscale them to be massive sized hi-res flac files when they're really just mp3s? My guess is that a large majority of users only get their files from browsing soulseek, so the origin of a file might be way back years in a chain of people sharing it around on soulseek and at a time mp3s were probably more popular and widely upscaled to be fake flacs. Not sure if thats even close to the reason but let me know.

7. Is there a way to verify the legitimacy of rare hi-res albums or rare top quality vinyl rips without having to download them and check using spectrogram and other methods?

8. How can i search for users with massive collections of the highest quality stuff? or is it just luck that i stumble across a gem collection?

9. What are the accepted etiquette rules when asking users about locked files or rare releases?

10. Are there many well known respected uploaders or rippers for vinyl, SACD and audiophile hi-res releases and how can i find them?

11. Is it useful to save users whose files repeatedly prove genuine and browse their collections first instead of the search bar?

12. Why do some releases appear only when i browse a user’s library rather than through search?

13. How do i choose between 20–30 versions of the same album?

14. What are the most reliable free file authenticators better than Fakin the funk or just Spek?

15. Which databases, forums or communities are best for researching and settling on the definitive mastering of an album before looking it up on soulseek?

16. What is the most practical file naming system for albums, specific enough to distinguish between a few different versions of the same album?

17. Which albums are the most sought-after or definitive digital, SACD or vinyl-rip versions circulating on Soulseek?

No need to answer them all, but answering a few if you really know what you're talking about would help immensely!

Any questions that can't be asked based on the subreddit's rules you dont need to answer

Hi, I'm very much brand new to soulseek. About 10-15 years ago, I was an active member of some private music trackers (now dead).

I've been using Mullvad for years, and really like their ethics, track record etc - but obviously Mullvad doesn't offer port forwarding anymore.

I'm reading mixed things about whether a VPN is necessary as a security layer.

I've also read mixed things about whether its necessary to use a VPN with port-forwarding (as less users can download from me).

So a few questions:

1. Is there any real risk to not having a VPN? Am I being overly cautious/lacking in my understanding of how P2P works if I'm concerned?
2. If the answer to (1) is "yes" - if I continued using Mullvad (i.e. VPN without port-forwarding), would it affect enough users that I wouldn't be sharing sufficiently and/or be likely to get banned by other users?
3. If the answer to (2) is "yes" - what VPN does the community recommend? I saw a bunch of old threads on this subreddit, r/piracy and r/mullvad, but they're mostly recommendations from 3 years ago when Mullvad announced it was dropping port forwarding, with a lot of recommendations for now un-trusted (or unavailable) VPNs.

im new and i wanna download music, so how do i know which flacs are real in the search options?

im on a school laptop and its making me out in my adim user name and password which i dont have, any way is there a alt download that doesnt need that, if so can u link it in the comments thank you

its not school owned but we use laptops at my school, which have sucrity features, but i do own it

I'm trying to have Soulseek set up on multiple computers. The goal is to have one main computer, attached to an external drive, logged into Soulseek at all times. But when I'm at my other (work) computer, I also want to be able to login and download things and then just drop albums or whatever from one computer to the other. The problem is that when I login to my work computer, it signs me into my username, but then there are no files to share since they're attached to my other computer. And that wouldn't be problem - but then the next time I log into my main computer, I basically have to re-add all my shared folders since I'm not sharing anything on the work computer.

Hopefully that makes sense, not sure if I explained it right. Basically I want to be able to download things on the work computer and just throw it over to the main one without messing everything up. I'm not opposed to using another program but it doesn't seem like there are any great alternatives to Soulseek. Can anyone help me set this up right?

I use nicotine+ am constantly getting these users downloading a single song from me like a random song in the middle of an album, its constantly in [Getting Status] and then after a few minutes fails with [Connection Timeout] and retries. Or alternatively ill get someone who downloads an entire folder/album from me, then one single song is stuck and gets stuck in that same loop of single song, Getting Status -> Timeout. The one throughline between both cases is it is ALWAYS without a doubt, when I go to the users profile I see:
"A slskd user:" and a github link

Whats up with this happening? I feel bad doing it but ive resorted to having to abort a lot of these stuck single downloads. Isnt slskd just a web server containerization for slsk? Why is it im always getting these odd cases from them exclusively?

And on top of that, what is up with the influx of users downloading single songs seemingly at random? I understand some times you do just want a single song but ive been using slsk for over a decade and came back after a year or so of absence, and only recently have i seen people only downloading single songs the majority of the time, sometimes multiple individual songs from multiple folders seemingly at random. Like id say a solid 80:20 ratio of songs:albums. If i understand correctly theres some kinda botting streaming service or something that uses it? Or is it a cultural thing? What would even be the point of that? I dont want to ban because these users (mostly) do seem to actually share files but its just really odd and not what i would expect from the user base. To clarify i am very against this ai scraping and tech bro vibe coded slop ruining things i love, but from what I understand SLSKD isnt that and is just like running slsk through a container no? Or is it just a bug with SLSKD maybe?

Is there any feature, mod or plugin you can click to STOP SEARCHING?

I have this problem a lot when searching for any file that has a 1-word title. I see the thing i want appear quickly then WHOOSH , dozens and hundreds of things I don't want spam-fill the screen and push it way down.

alternatively, any better way to search for things with 1-word titles?

i am wanting to make a program that can search through my Spotify liked songs and take the info [song name, artist etc] and load them in to Soulseek and then go through available options and either present me with a choice of which ones have best quality based on size and attributes along with matching the details taken form spotifty for me to choose what to download or to just have it download the one with the highest quality and matches the info inputed. I am imagine this could be hard thing to build an am wondering if anyone else has had similar ideas maybe even done it.

EDIT: I WONT BE MORALLY WORNG BECAUSE I WILL SHARE!

Are there bands simply blocked from showing up in Soulseek? I’ve never had this happen to me before. I always find what I’m looking for or at the very least searches containing the key words on my input, but with a specific band, nothing.

A week ago all my friends could see my music through the global search engine, now I've disappeared. What's the reason? Can it be fixed? It's new electronic music.