Technology

The company that currently owns Bandcamp laid off all of the union bargaining team members when they acquired Bandcamp, or rather, didn't extend an offer of employment to all of them which is effectively a layoff or firing. Just adding on to your comment so people are more aware, in case they need extra convincing to only buy from Bandcamp on that day (or preferably not at all). Purchase directly from artists whenever possible. Pretty sure those workers who were fired are still seeking resolution, and I don't think Songtradr, the company that acquired Bandcamp, ever recognized the union even though they voted yes in their vote to unionize with OPEIU months before the acquisition. Go here for more info.

The absolute basics:

1. Install qbittorrent
2. Install a VPN and run it so that all your Internet traffic goes down it
3. Open a Web browser and search for top torrent sites 2025. There are articles with lists of the big ones.
4. Go to a torrent site and search for what you want.
5. Download the .torrent file and open it in qbittorrent OR copy the magnet link and paste that into qbit torrent. Either will start your download.

Always use the VPN when searching and downloading.

There are lots of steps to make it more convenient - things like using a Virutal machine so the vpn and torrent do their thing while you do whatever else you want on your PC, or setting up a docker Servarr stack to make things more convenient, or setting up a Raspberry pi / other device as a servarr stack. But for the basics all you need is a torrent client, a VPN and a Web browser.

All the extra advanced stuff is just quality of life, like being able to leave it downloading securely 24hours a day or organising your downloads better.

Start out simple and stick with a basic BitTorrent client. Figure out where you want to download from and get a torrent client configured. I use an ISP that frowns upon piracy so here's a quick overview:

1. Look for public torrent sites. I'm out of this game so I don't have any suggestions.
2. Research private torrent trackers. I don't think I can provide any help with this, but there are other corners of Lemmy who can.
3. Find a VPN. Everyone has thoughts on this and Proton VPN is the one I'm currently using.
4. Pick a torrent client. I'd recommend qBittorrent myself.
5. Configure your VPN to include your BT traffic.

If/when you want to try Lidarr, you'll be much better off knowing the basics of BitTorrent because *arr software is confusing in its own regard. Lidarr is just a tool to organize your music library folders and also automatically queue downloads. It is not a requirement to enjoy downloading music.

Usenet and soulseek are other alternatives.

I scrobble all my navidrome activity to listenbrainz, which gives a weekly playlist of recommendations. You might have to wait a few weeks before it can establish your tastes depending on how much music you play.

If you’re fortunate enough to live near a well-funded library, you can peruse their new arrivals section for CDs. That’s how I discover new artists

As far as I can tell, no. I haven't been able to search or import releases since about April.

You'll have to be more specific. :) I think it works well for organizing a music library unless there are issues with this feature that I'm unaware of. Using it to queue downloads was painful for me, so I resort to less automated ways to acquire music files.

Simply put, the *arr software concept works well for downloading movies and TV shows (Radarr and Sonarr). Music just seems to be a little more difficult and I have lots of issues with Lidarr finding music out on Usenet and trackers. I hope that's user error on my part.

You need the software, but there’s nothing about that request that should require access to the Internet.

I have a LLM chatbot that controls my Home Assistant and Kodi players. It’s all done locally and the response time is under a second.

On my PC(Arch, btw) I have a global hotkey so I can hold the key to record a message and when I let go of the key it uses a local model to do speech to text and sends the result to the chatbot.

I could probably use a wake word but I’d need to mic up my house and I’d rather not do that. A bluetooth lapel mic and a single button Bluetooth “keyboard” about the size of a key switch (using an ESP32C3 microcontroller) give me the same functionality.

There is so much music today. To say new music sucks is wild

Instead of slskd I recommend using nicotine+. I found slskd worked fine, but was a pain to set up. I found a Nicotine docker that works just like the app inside a web UI. Much less of a learning curb for someone who's not familiar with servers.

I thought Lidarr is for music. Sonarr is for series.

Downloading music illegally avoids giving money to the bad companies but the artists still need to get paid. They can't work for free. They deserve our money. So please share music, but also support the artists. Through bandcamp for example.