If you live in a country with heavy region locking, or you’re a fat yank that loves Japanese music, you likely cannot find the content that you seek on popular audio streaming sites like Spotify, Soundcloud or Deezer. Naturally, the solution to this problem is theft. But how/where do you pirate music?
First, you’ll be downloading everything locally, so you’ll need a good audio player. I recommend foobar2000, as it’s very robust, easy to navigate/play large playlists from and has EQ options. I personally use foobar2000 with this theme (Mirror). It’ll look something like this:
Alternatively, you can use Georgia-ReBORN, but I find it a little clunky.
Next, you’ll download Nicotine+, an open-source Soulseek client. Soulseek is a P2P network, somewhat similar to torrenting. The main differences lie in the following:
-Files are shared by individual users. so you’re downloading a file from one peer, rather than multiple seeders. “Seeding” works by sharing the file yourself.
-You browse Soulseek files by searching within Soulseek, no individual trackers.
-When you have Nicotine+ open, you are connected to Soulseek. This exposes your IP to everyone, not just who you’re downloading from. Use a VPN. I personally recommend TorGuard, and @mona recommends iVPN.
-Soulseek has additional functionality, such as chats.
-Soulseek is primarily for audio, though some people share other types of files.
When you have Nicotine+ installed, go to Preferences and set a download folder. You’re ready to get started, so just go ahead and search for whatever you’re looking for in the Search tab. if a file says [PRIVATE], it means OP is a fag and will only share it for a trade. They’re usually looking for FLACs of some hyper obscure bullshit that you definitely don’t have. This is a good time to talk about FLACs, FLACs are losslessly compressed audio files, as opposed to lossily compressed MP3 files and uncompressed WAV files. These files are far, far bigger than MP3s, but sound noticeably better. I recommend you filter to FLAC/WAV/CUE etc. in the file type field on Nicotine+. Anyways, once you find what you’re looking for, just right click the file and hit Download File(s). If you’re trying to download an entire album, don’t select the everything and hit Download File(s), instead, right click one of the files and hit Download Folder(s). This keeps it sorted in its own sub folder within whatever folder you set it to download to. That’s about all you need to know for Soulseek/Nicotine+.
Also, within foobar2000, make sure you go to Library>Configure and add your Nicotine+ downloads folder as a music folder. It detects subfolders. To reload the library after downloading something new, go to Library and hit Album List.
You’re all set up now, enjoy.
p.s. If you can’t find what you want on Soulseek, you can use something like DeezLoader to download from Deezer, or you can user a direct download/torrent site. I can’t think of any off hand, but I’ll add them to this if someone recommends some, or if I remember. If you’re looking to torrent and have no experience, @mona wrote a guide. Which is full of good information, if you’re cool with sparing comma usage.
