VPN needed for using Soulseek?

Hiya,

Working on completely replacing Spotify completely. Soulseek has popped up a few times here and there among forums and here on lemmy, so I thought I'd give that a go. I've started with getting Nicotine+ client and seems to be working fine. However, what does the traffic look like when downloading/uploading things over the Soulseek network? I read its peer-to-peer network, but does that mean I don't need a VPN? I'm also told to open a port on my router, I'm assuming this is so that I can share my own library with the rest of the network, but how safe is this?

If anyone could help my clarify this I'd greatly appreciate it!

Edit: Just found this very promising project too! https://github.com/slskd/slskd

13 comments

you should probably use a VPN if you’re uploading because it’s trivial for law enforcement to track - there’s no Onion routing or anything like that, and anyone can register and search
but for downloading / leeching I wouldn’t be as worried because very generally speaking people aren’t harassed for downloading, only sharing
- but for downloading / leeching I wouldn’t be as worried because very generally speaking people aren’t harassed for downloading
  Comcast and Verizon will threaten to shut off your account if you're caught pirating; I think they don't even wait for a DCMA request, they just look at your traffic and if you're doing piratey stuff, you get a nastigram email. I don't know how many strikes you get before they enforce it, but the point is they do pursue downloaders.

You can download a lot of music, very safely without anything. But maybe it could depend of your country. But if it's a "okay" piracy country you shouldn't any issues, even when sharing I've seen a lot of residential IPs

I have used soulseek (nicotine) for awhile now with no VPN and have not gotten a ISP letter or anything for around a year now (but this is anecdotal and others could vary). It would probably be safer to do with VPN but here we are. As for the port openings it does have to do with sharing and being able to browse others lists. some users only allow downloads and such if you are also sharing files but depending on music you will find someone. I have been meaning to move to slskd for awhile now
- For clarity only reason I have kept doing this is my understanding of how a complaint would be filed to me. Since Soulseek is "peer-to-peer" in the sense that you're connecting from one peer to another peer directly. There is little chance of a copyright trolls to scan for your IP address unlike joining a torrent tracker where they can write down all IP they see in that swarm. If I am completely off please let me know lol

I would. Anyone can look at your profile and see "your" IP, I just prefer if that isn't actually mine. That said, get a VPN with port forwarding if possible.

Not sure why people are saying port forwarding is required. I have no ports forwarded to slskd and people are downloading from me just fine.
- Isn't the purpose of peer to peer to for people to connect to each other? If your port isn't open then how do they connect to you?
  
  Not sure exactly sure how it all works. I've never needed to open ports for qbittorrent for downloading or seeding, I imagine it's the same principal. I 100% don't have any ports open and can see people actively downloading my music in slskd, confirmed even more by the thank you messages I receive for sharing.
- at least one of the pair needs a open port. people with open ports can download from you, the ones with closed ports can't.

13 comments