soulseek

Genushaha highly recommends soulseek for all your file sharing desires. It's a different beast from torrents, specifically catering to music collectors, especially those who want whole albums.

Unlike torrents where you are downloading from everyone online who has the file you want all at once, on soulseek you get your files from individual users. While that does mean a lot of time "awaiting user," having used both systems extensively soulseek is equally or even more efficient a delivery system. The individual contact does a much better job of getting users to talk with each other and create a community. You even have musicians creating music especially for consumption on soulseek. That is so cool, and something you won't see on Pirate Bay.

Torrents are quite nifty if you want to, say, replace all your ZZ Top records with one download. They are also better at catering to the audiophile geeks that are into the latest nerdy format that I don't care about because it's all Beta to mp3's VHS. In every other way I prefer soulseek. I've never downloaded something from soulseek that isn't what it says it is, either in content or quality (apart from the infrequent damaged track that keeps propagating - I can't tell you how many times I tried before I found a copy of Barney Kessel's Lover Man that didn't sound like someone started flipping channels on the radio about half a minute in). Since it's designed first for people to share their own music you can find a whole lot more obscure stuff like we get on the college radio, and specialist users who have amazing depth covering just about every genre.

Besides posting recommendations geared for the soulseek community, I'll probably also use this blog to muse about soulseek user stuff that will bore the piss out of everybody else. That is if I don't get distracted and let it lie fallow for another 6 months.