I want to get off spotify, but I want a way to discover new music, and be notified of new music from bands I listen to. I don’t want ads, and I’m fine with piracy so long it is a relatively painless experience. Something like stremio but for music.
My dream service would be one that could recommend music based on a given song, and provide details about the artist and things. And even better version would have an API I could tap into so I could connect the service to music assistant. Hell I’ll make a (mostly) locally hosted version of the spotify dj if I can.
Soulseek is a p2p client originally a contemporary of the likes of Napster and Kazaa but it has survived and kept an active user base into the modern day. Somewhere about a decade ago whenever what.cd went down a bunch of the content got dumped onto Soulseek where it has lived ever since
I host a large library of files and whenever someone downloads something from me I go and browse their collection and look for at least one album to download and add to my collection. I have found some interesting audio this way
OP if you use Android, check out this FOSS client.
Also, Soulseek itself as a service is proprietary & centralized, don’t buy privileges on it, funds a guy who went to Tel Aviv University (unless someone can dig up Ilan Pappé-level based writings by him, this is enough to avoid it imo). It’s definitely one of the best public spots for music access. Unless you speak Russian or Chinese I guess.
https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/apk/com.companyname.andriodapp1
Expand app description
An unofficial soulseek client.
Seeker is an unofficial client for Soulseek. It uses the Soulseek.NET library for communicating with Soulseek server and peers.
Features:
• Searching (including wishlists and filters)
• Browsing User Directories
• Downloads and Uploads
• Port Forwarding via UPnP
• Chatrooms and Messages
• Adding Users
• Get and Set User Info
• Privileges