Comment on Why I Ditched Spotify, and How I Set Up My Own Music Stack

BarrelAgedBoredom@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

• BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The absolute basics:

  1. Install qbittorrent
  2. Install a VPN and run it so that all your Internet traffic goes down it
  3. Open a Web browser and search for top torrent sites 2025. There are articles with lists of the big ones.
  4. Go to a torrent site and search for what you want.
  5. Download the .torrent file and open it in qbit torrent Or copy the magnet link and paste that into qbittorrent

  Always use the VPN when searching and downloading.

  There are lots of steps to make it more convenient - things like using a Virutal machine so the vpn and torrent do their thing while you do whatever else you want on your PC, or setting up a docker Servarr stack to make things more convenient, or setting up a Raspberry pi as a servarr stack. But for the basics all you need is a torrent client, a VPN and a Web browser.

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  • Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    PSA: you may not need a VPN at all, depending on your country or your ISP.

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  • Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    If you’re going to pay money to pirate, you might as well skip the VPN and qbittorrent and just get a Debrid service instead. This gets you direct downloads to any torrent at gigabit speeds, without having to wait for seeds. Debrid takes the torrent client completely out of the picture.

    All you do is copy and paste the magnet link into the Debrid site, and then directly download the torrent from your browser. It’s cheaper and much faster than a VPN + torrent client. And safer too because your ISP doesn’t see you sharing any illegal content (seeding the files is how they get you) nor using a VPN, so you can still pirate in places where VPNs are illegal. They just see you downloading large files from the internet. And since you’re not distributing anything (seeding), you’re staying within the law in most jurisdictions.

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    • misteloct@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Downvotes are probably for your tone about VPNs.

      VPNs are not a tool for piracy, they are a tool for privacy. Everyone should have a VPN like Mullvad/Proton or use Tor/I2P if they don’t want their private Internet searches uploaded to the US government to be scanned and scrutinized at will, and possibly sold and publicized, even criminalized. That goes for non Americans too.

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      • nyctre@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        All that, plus the fact that if you’re gonna pirate, private trackers are better and safer. And in that case you need to seed. And besides, if everyone switches to debrid and nobody seeds anymore, who are you going to leech from?

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      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Do they really say “Users personal data’s”?

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    • bobzer@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I’m guessing you don’t seed then.

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      • Psythik@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Of course not, because there’s nothing to seed when you’re downloading a file directly from a server. I thought I already explained this.

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    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I’m not “paying money to pirate”. I’m paying money for privacy, and filesharing is part of that. I would still be using a VPN even if everything I downloaded was public domain.

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• bigb@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Start out simple and stick with a basic BitTorrent client. Figure out where you want to download from and get a torrent client configured. I use an ISP that frowns upon piracy so here’s a quick overview:

  1. Look for public torrent sites. I’m out of this game so I don’t have any suggestions.
  2. Research private torrent trackers. I don’t think I can provide any help with this, but there are other corners of Lemmy who can.
  3. Find a VPN. Everyone has thoughts on this and Proton VPN is the one I’m currently using.
  4. Pick a torrent client. I’d recommend qBittorrent myself.
  5. Configure your VPN to include your BT traffic.

  If/when you want to try Lidarr, you’ll be much better off knowing the basics of BitTorrent because *arr software is confusing in its own regard.

  Usenet and soulseek are other alternatives.

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  • Akasazh@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    For music, soulseek is a great resource too

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  • Scrollone@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    VPNs are only needed in some countries (e.g. France). They’re not needed in every country (i.e. Italy doesn’t give a fuck about piracy, unless it’s football matches).

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• nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  i personally use a provider for that. i just download torrents to their cloud and get it at maximum speed from there. so I don’t have to worry about p2p risks or being online a lot. I’m with premiumize, but there are others I guess.

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  • axx@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    The problem is those companies (premiumize, debrid, whatever) are entities that make profits from filesharing and give nothing back to artists. That’s not morally defensible.

    Filesharing itself is perfectly morally defensible, and in fact sharing culture is good for society (including artists).

    So while they might be convenient, they also shouldn’t exist in the first place. Parasitic companies shouldn’t be rewarded for their patristic behaviour.

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    • nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      you are not wrong, but this also applies to VPN services. (their defense is as good as the sharehosters are useful for downloading Linux ISOs)

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      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        VPNs would still be in business if illegal filesharing didn’t exist. I don’t think you could say the same for sharehosters.

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