I’ve just started using Soulseek and it’s great. I want to make sure that I’m being a good neighbour on it - do I need to do anything to ensure that my files are available for others to download? And do I need to structure directories e.g Artist name > Album name or does it work off metadata?


I use Nicotine+ as my client. You nailed it on the file structure. I also run all my files through Picard to make sure everything is all good.
As far as ensuring that your files are available for download, you’ll have to check/set the permissions for the drive/folder where they’re stored.
As far as being a good neighbour - make your files available and communicate. (I honestly don’t understand why folks make tracks “private.”)
This is my pet fucking hate. Within the genre I download / share so many people have all their files private and they want you to give them shit like bandcamp vouchers and stuff like that to have access to their locked files. It fucking boils my piss and it goes against the whole point of piracy as I see it.
I purposefully block all these fucking cunts, all my files are wide open to everyone and I am constantly getting a lot of new releases so if they want to lock their files they can’t have the privilege of sharing in my stuff, utter pieces of shit.
Exactly.
So far, I’ve been able to find pretty much everything without issues but the amount of private files that come up is crazy. The few I haven’t found, I’ve been able to download from SoundCloud.
I’ve had some folks switch their files to private while I was downloading. I ban them.
Compared to others out there, my collection isn’t big, but all of my files are shared.
A friend of mine kept all his music in the same folder, including music he created. Prevention of theft might be a reason to mark as music, although this is a very niche use case.
What a hilarious point of view considering the circumstances
Saying ‘prevention of theft’ is a poor suggestion on my end and an incorrect depiction of his motives and usage of Soulseek. I can’t say for sure really, he passed away in 2021 so I’ll never know his motives. I tried to think of a reason why someone might mark something private and that’s what I ended up with. I probably should have thought this through better.
He used a lot of samples for his music using multitracks, the releases from artists meant specifically for remixing and sampling and I believe searching for multitracks from lesser known artists was his main use for Soulseek, basically networking, not piracy, and that he also had poor file and project management?
I’m not sure how to convey the connection that I saw in my head. I probably should have left this post alone.