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?
my folder structure is like:
└── genres ├── Acapellas ├── Afrobeat ├── Ambient ├── BASSSSSSSSSSSSSS ├── Bollywood ├── Breakbeat ├── Chutney ├── Country ├── Dancehall ├── DUBSTEPand people download my files just fine, sometimes they just download entire folders since I organize by genre, not artist.
I’m curious about your Bollywood folder. How big is it? I want to build a structured collection of old songs, and new ones too in as high quality as possible. I have nicotine+ installed but so far I couldn’t find anyone with an authoritative collection.
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.
Prevention of theft might be a reason to mark as private, although this is a very niche use case.
What a hilarious point of view considering the circumstances
Artist name, album name and track name should exist in file name or parent folder/s. Does not use metadata. You should open soulseeks port in your router. Maybe your router has upnp enabled, if so, you can enable upnp in your soulseek client and you are good to go. If you do not open the port, only users with open port can download from you. Remember to share the music you download too. Welcome to slsk :)
You probably have to set somewhere which folder(s) you want to be discoverable.
Regarding directory structure, Soulseek search only uses file names as far as I as know. So having a consistent naming structure certainly helps. Some tools like the fantastic MusicBrainz Picard might help!
The search uses filenames and parent folders.
Structured folders also helps since you can download whatever folder a specific song is in so typically the folder would be the album title with the artist one level higher.
I only have slskd, so I’m not sure if it’s different, but folder structure should have artist > album, but outside of that it doesn’t matter much. My folder names all contain musicbrainz ids for use in jellyfin, but I’ve had plenty of uploads.
I think a VPN with port forwarding helps make your library discoverable on soulseek, but I don’t know enough to answer beyond that
I use nicotine+, and you have to set the port you’re using, and either make sure it’s forwarded, or turn your router’s uPNP setting on so that nicotine will handle the port for you.





