WinMX vs Soulseek vs Shaeraza vs Kazaa

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Roll up roll up, what are people using to d/l music these days...I kinda alternate between the four in the thread title. Anyone got any suggestions or hints about the next big thing in file sharing...

― Maimonides, Thursday, 6 March 2003 16:57 (twenty-three years ago)

WinMX & Soulseek in tandem usually see me right.

― Minky Starshine (Minky Starshine), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:02 (twenty-three years ago)

Pretty much everything other then Kazaa is crap. Everything running on the gnuetalla network sucks, and the others dont have enough users.

― David Allen, Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:44 (twenty-three years ago)

audiogalaxy was the BEST. If i had known that AG was going to close, i'd have done nothing but download music and take speed to keep awake. I'll tell my grandkids about Audiogalaxy. That said, Kazzaa is second best, and at that, it's not even 10% as good.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:47 (twenty-three years ago)

I disagree completely with David. Kazaa is spyware infected and I can't find anything but he most obvious hits and usually only at 128K. With WinMX, I can find better quality single songs and with Soulseek, I can regularly download full albums months before they hit the streets. Soulseek is also great for rare/obscure stuff. For example, I just download V/A - Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems 2000 in it's entirety at 192k. Name any other p2p program where that is even possible. Only Audiogalaxy came close.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:50 (twenty-three years ago)

I agree wholeheartedly with Spencer Chow on this. (WinMX also has a lot of eBooks for download.) Whereas I've *never* seen an mp3 on Kazaa/Morpheus with a bit-rate higher than 128.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:58 (twenty-three years ago)

There is a spyware-free version of KaZaa (KaZaa Lite) which I haven't used, being happy with WinMX & Soulseek about whom Spencer is OTM. Oh AudioGalaxy - I yearn for you tragically...

― Minky Starshine (Minky Starshine), Thursday, 6 March 2003 19:04 (twenty-three years ago)

WinMX is terrible!! Like 90% of the stuff I download takes like an hour for the download to even start! Horrid!!

I choose SoulSeek. It's great because you can download entire folders of albums.

― Evan (Evan), Thursday, 6 March 2003 19:14 (twenty-three years ago)

has anyone noticed the new thing going on in Kazaa where you download songs and only get minute excerpts that repeat for the length of a song, fading in and out, OR promo snippets titled as actual album song titles? Sneaky, corporate anti-piracy shit - happened to me with Zwan and Freeway - so listen before you burn, people - I wasted two CD-Rs.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Thursday, 6 March 2003 19:16 (twenty-three years ago)

WinMX is terrible!! Like 90% of the stuff I download takes like an hour for the download to even start! Horrid!!
This just means theres alot of people using that service. The line gets long.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Thursday, 6 March 2003 19:24 (twenty-three years ago)

Audiogalaxy pretty much built the ultimate P2P music network, but the model proved to be too vulnerable legally - too bad.

Kazaa is great for mainstream stuff, but for obscure artists or promo/whitelabel/etc vinyl rips of dance music, Slsk seems to be the best. Got pretty annoyed with WinMX's queues too, I must say.

― Siegbran (eofor), Thursday, 6 March 2003 20:29 (twenty-three years ago)

They all have queues. The more people with more demand for more files == longer lines at the P2P checkout counter.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Thursday, 6 March 2003 20:37 (twenty-three years ago)

soulseek all the way. although nobody's put up a full copy of the new gang starr album and it's PISSING ME OFF.

― your null fame (yournullfame), Thursday, 6 March 2003 21:11 (twenty-three years ago)

i've never heard of shaeraza...

would any care to praise or criticize it?

― drystereo (drystereo), Thursday, 6 March 2003 21:16 (twenty-three years ago)

Soulseek's the only good one going right now, in terms of a) ease of use b) selection c) community and d) lack of spyware.

Kazaa has virtually nothing going for it - it's loaded with spyware and bugs, it's disorganized, and in spite of having the most people sharing it has by far the worst selection.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Thursday, 6 March 2003 21:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh - and if you're on Soulseek, you can pay $5 a month to be able to cut ahead in queues. Which is great.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Thursday, 6 March 2003 21:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Why have I had such awful experiences with Soulseek? There's some obscure stuff, but it's a total crapshoot, and maybe 5% of what I queue will actually begin to download. Those unbeliveably long lines are intimidating too. Sometimes I'll be number 700 or something in line. Kazaa (lite, of course) has a disappointing selection, but the speed and reliability is way, way, way better than Soulseek.

I'd like to think that I'm doing something wrong. Is that "secondary" connection thing really so bad? I have a router, so I guess there's no way around it.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Thursday, 6 March 2003 21:28 (twenty-three years ago)

If you are online 24/7, then WinMX is it, if not, then go for Kazaa.

Best of all, use both.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 7 March 2003 01:14 (twenty-three years ago)

You're being impatient! Just because something isn't readily available, it doesn't mean it won't be in a few minutes. That's why it is good to check for things repeatedly and in different permutations, and to put obscure searches on your wishlist so that when it does pop up, you can snatch it right away. The $5 charge for the privilege to jump ahead in line counts for a lot too.

― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Friday, 7 March 2003 02:03 (twenty-three years ago)

i am promptly going to download soulseek right now based on the rave reviews here. Looking for Circle stuff at this particular second, and seeking that Dry Hustle 12" too. Really obscure stuff? What's the site?

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Friday, 7 March 2003 02:06 (twenty-three years ago)

Geir, on your recommendation, I used Soulseek to download this Erlend Öye album with a single right click and save folder. This would have been much more difficult on WinMX or Kazaa.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 7 March 2003 02:09 (twenty-three years ago)

HOW DO I GET SOULSEEK?? went, like a dummy, to soulseek.com - nothing there.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Friday, 7 March 2003 02:14 (twenty-three years ago)

do you use Google?

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Friday, 7 March 2003 02:17 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm the only person on ILM who still uses imesh, it would seem.

― CharlieNo4 (Charlie), Friday, 7 March 2003 02:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Does anyone use opennap?

― Graham (graham), Friday, 7 March 2003 02:33 (twenty-three years ago)

Just downloaded Soulseek and will check it out. Anyway, I will never use just one of those client until one of them gets as good as Audiogalaxy used to be.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 7 March 2003 02:52 (twenty-three years ago)

soulseek all the way. although nobody's put up a full copy of the new gang starr album and it's PISSING ME OFF.
Um...well, the whole idea of P2P is that you download 1 0r 2 tracks so you know if the album is worth buying...and then buying it. Then you get a complete copy. With liner notes!

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, 7 March 2003 05:57 (twenty-three years ago)

HOW DO I GET SOULSEEK?? went, like a dummy, to soulseek.com - nothing there.
www.slsk.com/

Just downloaded Soulseek and will check it out. Anyway, I will never use just one of those client until one of them gets as good as Audiogalaxy used to be.
Well, any that get too big or popular get killed by the RIAA. Slsk had a close call about a week and a half ago.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, 7 March 2003 05:59 (twenty-three years ago)

I am, as of an hour ago, a Soulseek convert and devotee. It seems almost as good as Audiogalaxy for the obscuro stuff. I actually went to bed already tonight, got my mind cluttered with things to download, and came back downstairs to download. I'll be here all night. Fuck kazaa.

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Friday, 7 March 2003 06:01 (twenty-three years ago)

Every time a soul is delivered from the hell that is Kazaa, an angel dets his wings.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, 7 March 2003 06:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Shareaza is a class program, excellently coded effecient and with a brand spanking new protocol called Gnutella2, which is a million times more reliable and fast than the original Gnutella network.

If you wanna check it out go to www.shareaza.com

― Maimonides (Maimonides), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 12:33 (twenty-three years ago)

what about for Mac OSX users. Gnutella is great and Carracho is only good sometimes and you cannot search across servers.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 13:58 (twenty-three years ago)

if u r using soulseek (chris h and oters) only download
tracks with no queue at all and with the lowest poss. bitrate.
also, if the track/file in question isn't d/l fast enough, or
you can't actually get one without a queue, keep entering the
name of the file, or the artist every so
often and keep going back
to see what comes up as what's available has invariably
changed each time you check. it's not case sensitive
but it is sensitive to spelling.
with patience at first
you can master it to get pretty much *anything*.
also use the 'wishlist' because it's so ace !

it won't last forever.

― piscesboy, Tuesday, 11 March 2003 15:49 (twenty-three years ago)

I love Soulseek but I find the search operation's not always very useful. Kazaa (LITE, mind you) can be helpful if you're just looking for one specific track.

Also Soulseek is a REAL memory hog, which can be trouble. Sometimes it makes my computer go in slow motion.

― slutsky (slutsky), Tuesday, 11 March 2003 17:02 (twenty-three years ago)

three weeks pass...

*sigh*
Well. I was just on Soulseek, and out of thirty one different user browses, thirty sez "No Files Shared"! (Only your fellow ILM'er blueski actually allowed people to share. Go Blueski!)
The following is aimed at everyone else on Soulseek:

Jesus Christ, people! If you aren't going to share, don't use file-sharing programs! YOU ARE NOT GRASPING THE PURPOSE OF THIS SOFTWARE, MORONS!

Thank you for your attention.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Monday, 7 April 2003 00:34 (twenty-three years ago)

indeed. although my slsk experiences are improving. i'm still yet to get the complete Kittin/Hacker album though. tempted to actually buy it instead.

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Monday, 7 April 2003 00:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Speaking of being forced to buy your records instead of downloading them:
The RIAA just started a suit against four students at MTU for fileswapping. They are demanding $150,000 per song traded. Considering that these kids traded more than 650,000 times, that comes out to roughly 97 Billion dollars.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Monday, 7 April 2003 00:54 (twenty-three years ago)

Fuck them! I share like a sonofabitch, but since (I guess) I have over 6,000 MP3s of CRAP, no one ever gets anything off of me. I usually just end up shutting Soulseek off. I never find anything I want on there anyway.

― Bryan (Bryan), Monday, 7 April 2003 00:56 (twenty-three years ago)

the most downloaded artist from me has been I Am Spoonbender. fucksake.

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Monday, 7 April 2003 00:56 (twenty-three years ago)

(what's worse is that they're all FREE MP3s i got off the band's website *guffaw*)

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Monday, 7 April 2003 00:57 (twenty-three years ago)

Here's the RIAA's version of the bust
and
Here's the other side of the story, courtesy of the Detroit Free Press.
(ignore the scare-mongering assessment that it add's up to 97.8 Trillion dollars. She musta misplaced the decimal place.)

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Monday, 7 April 2003 01:04 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm twp52yo in the ILM room, btw, not that that matters.

― Bryan (Bryan), Monday, 7 April 2003 01:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Are you in Soulseek right NOW?

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Monday, 7 April 2003 01:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Soulseek 4evah, even if the search engine sucks. (the wishlist feature is the key) Also, easily has the highest ratio of nice folks to jerks on any filesharing program I've ever used. Every time someone starts a conversation up, they are always these really great people from another country who don't mind telling me about obscure latin psych or whatever. Kazaa blows.

― original bgm, Monday, 7 April 2003 01:19 (twenty-three years ago)

whenever I come across someone who doesn't share I just ban them immediately.

― James Blount (James Blount), Monday, 7 April 2003 01:25 (twenty-three years ago)

i've found that "remote: file not shared" is not always accurate though. i've had a go at a user about it and they claimed that the file was still shared. huh.

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Monday, 7 April 2003 01:27 (twenty-three years ago)

WinMX, Soulseek and Kazaa together works fine for me.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, 7 April 2003 01:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Custos: yes I am (unless you're the fuzz, then NO WAY MAN!).

― Bryan (Bryan), Monday, 7 April 2003 01:30 (twenty-three years ago)

Okay. It's official:
blueski and Bryan (twp52yo) are cool.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Monday, 7 April 2003 02:24 (twenty-three years ago)

why do most of the files I'm sharing fail? i want to share, but it seems like 80% of my stuff fails going out. Rarely have problems incoming.

And, as of right now, I don't know why, but my file search isn't working on slsk. Everything else - wishlist, chat room, transfers - all working fine. But even when I put in the easiest searches (Radiohead, to test) nothing happens. This just started today. Why?

― roger adultery (roger adultery), Monday, 7 April 2003 03:14 (twenty-three years ago)

jim - yeah, esp. with soleseek you'll get technical glitches sometimes where it'll show 'remote:file not shared' or the transfer will just keep failing. it's really intermittant too - eg. sometimes I can download from Siegbran, sometimes I can't. I only ban or whatever when it shows 'No files shared', which (I believe) it only does when the person don't share.

― James Blount (James Blount), Monday, 7 April 2003 03:17 (twenty-three years ago)

I can't get any files to return in Soulseek's search at ALL. Fuck this would be a killer app if they just solved this search engine/memory hog bullshit once and for all.

The most frustrating thing is that even when the search returns results, I'm always wondering how many MORE instances are out there that I'm not finding out about...

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 7 April 2003 03:25 (twenty-three years ago)

Oo er apparently a test version of the latest Soulseek client (v1.4) is available on slsk.org as of now. The main improvement? Wider searches! This could explain all the problems.

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 7 April 2003 03:39 (twenty-three years ago)

it's an asynchronous network. there are problems. fortunately i have a good computer with fast processors, 1GB of RAM and a DSL connection.

unfortunately, the shit crashes on my machine at least once an hour, and is sometimes the cause of entire blue-screen crashes. they need to work out whatever problems slsk has w/ Win XP pretty soon.

i have just been using audioGnome instead and it works just fine. the same open-nap setup as WinMX and none of the wait.

― mosurock (mosurock), Monday, 7 April 2003 03:45 (twenty-three years ago)

Is it just me and my system, or has Soulseek been down for hours at a time over this last weekend 5-6 April? In fact, it's down again now...

― Joel, Monday, 7 April 2003 07:04 (twenty-three years ago)

James, I move files around a lot (limited HD space - only about 1.5 gb for mp3 use), and as slsk only updates the file list on startup, it's often massively incorrect after, say, two days of uptime.

― Siegbran (eofor), Monday, 7 April 2003 10:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Oh and if you want to know if it's you or the server that is down, bookmark http://www.remmelt.com/slskboard/status.php

― Siegbran (eofor), Monday, 7 April 2003 10:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Thanks Siegbran - a useful tool indeed.

― Joel, Monday, 7 April 2003 15:51 (twenty-three years ago)

i prefer the chisel to the crowbar actually... now skeletonkey 2.0, that's the bomb!

― theif #2, Monday, 7 April 2003 16:12 (twenty-three years ago)

Custos is delusional. I am not cool in any way. That was a fun talk we had, though.

― Bryan (Bryan), Monday, 7 April 2003 16:31 (twenty-three years ago)

siegbran rules both here and on soulseek, although sir may i suggest you purchase a fatter hard drive (as i have just done) to match your awesome supa-wyde connection?

also its worth pointing out that i've had quite a bit of trouble with slsk recently when it comes to sharing all folders and moving stuff around. the program kept crashing if i tried to share too much at once - i've now about 6000 files up for grabs and it seems ok - i reckon i could have almost double that on offer by the end of the month (esp. if today is anything to go by) but my connection is only cable and the likes of the illustrious nick k continue to defend the quantity belt

― stevem (blueski), Monday, 7 April 2003 16:59 (twenty-three years ago)

the most useful way to find anything on soulseek you might want is using the "Record Store Method".

you have to basically search for something completely simple and then find someone who's queueless and has a fast connection... then browse their files.

sure, you may not find what you were looking for, but you always find treasure this way.

i usually never download whole albums. p2p is like radio to me... it's for enjoyment, but it's for checking stuff out, not for ripping whole albums off. i can afford to plunk down $10 or $15 on a disc every couple weeks.

so in my fishing...i'm downloading some manitoba, jackie-o-motherfucker, mf doom, this heat, majestions, mike ladd, liszt...

i was hoping for some monade... but...
m.

― msp, Tuesday, 8 April 2003 14:53 (twenty-three years ago)

two years pass...

audiogalaxy was the BEST. If i had known that AG was going to close, i'd have done nothing but download music and take speed to keep awake. I'll tell my grandkids about Audiogalaxy.
-- roger adultery (vlad62...), March 6th, 2003.

Haha. I wonder how we will look at those days in say 10 or 20 years time.
Will p2p still be around?

― arachnoid, Monday, 9 May 2005 18:24 (twenty-one years ago)

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