Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Usenet is still very much a thing.

I use Eweka.nl (Usenet access) and NZBGeek (indexer). Works well.

I know Usenet is still alive and well for video, at least. Check out soulseek for music downloads if you want to try avoiding a subscription.

I use it exclusively. I think it's better than worrying about torrents. It almost feels obfuscated with the indexer.

Usenet is still very much alive.

For music, I use Lidarr (along with the rest of the arr stack) and Headphones as an indexer.

It doesn't have absolutely everything that I want but enough to make it worth the price.

Usenet is all I use... highly recommend it.

I have not used torrents in years after discovering usenet. You can find the most obscure stuff that is impossible to find on torrents. Plus you are not dependent on seeders, nor do you have to seed yourself. Or the frustration that the torrent stops at 99% and you still can't play. And to top it off the speed is amazing.

I do want to give a shout out to Kevin who developed the NZB360 app. It's the best app for usenet and my most used app on my phone.

Wow, that brings back memories

Loud, screeching memories

lots of people using Usenet.

I have 2 main servers on 2 different networks, plus some block accounts as backup and a couple of indexers.

But for music, especially if its anything unusual, rare, or otherwise difficult to locate elsewhere, get onto soulseek. I use N+ personally and have uploaded ~80TB this year so far and downloaded about 600Gb. I dont do torrents very often so SLSK is how I give back to the community.

Soulseek is an old school free file sharing P2P platform, like limewire, kazaa, winmx, ed2k etc. just like the good old days.

A few months ago I needed a lot of music (flacs in my case) and while to can find almost anything on soulseek (including some amazing vinyl rips) some niche artists were missing.

So what I did is I made a free trial account on deezer, got everything I needed during the free month using this deezer scraper and cancelled the trial before it ended.

What's the benefit of usenet over torrents?

I predominantly use Usenet for procuring all my media, except for

1. Switch ROMs, which I rely on torrents via NSWTL. I have 4 indexers and all of them give me “missing parts” error when I try to download Switch ROMs.
2. Music, which I rely on Telegram bots. I am in the process of migrating my streaming library to Navidrome and I haven’t found a better workflow than to send a playlist link to the bot, and downloading the music and then tagging it using Picard.

Yes.

I get my music from slsk though, try nicotine+ (client for soulseek).

Thanks for reminding me to hunt for that one japanese album I can't find anywhere on usenet though, that's the only place I haven't looked. Can't even buy a physical copy (and would be willing, I've been looking so long).

E: OH but be warned, put some files in your slsk share folder before you download, and you can also re-share your downloads folder. Some losers have auto-ban scripts for people "not sharing" which is mostly new people (though they're too dumb to realize that). Just throw a few albums in your "share" folder (and set that up in settings,) you'll bypass them. Also, would VPN, preferably with port forwarding but beggars can't be choosers.

Hell yeah. It's good to have as an alt source in an arr-stack setup. I prioritise torrent since that helps folks who don't/can't pay but it's there when TL falls or smth.

Yep. Exclusively.

for music theres also soulseek, or ripping from streaming platforms (deezer/tidal/qobuz)

I was under the impression Usenet was a BBS from the past, with designated port and server software, but people in the comments pay to use it as a P2P network?

How does it compare to soulseek?

I use soulseek for music full albums.

Local public libraries may have CDs you can borrow and rip. If you have a CD drive.

Daily.

i miss rec.sport.pro-wrestling.fantasy T_T