Music piracy is alive and well if you know where to look. Some places has been mentioned in this thread already. Of course there is no replacing the magic of early 2000-2010's p2p sites like OiNK, What and Waffles - but well curated sites still exist.

▲ ValdikSS 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Public p2p sharing is pretty much dead in the West.

Only Russian Rutracker is still going strong, but everything other is either stagnating or defunct.

I have a p2p sharing websites bookmarks which I collected about 5 years ago, 60% of them are dead now.

Private (invite-only) West sharing websites are still alive though, but are supported mostly by beefy enthusiasts who seed everything via a seedbox elsewhere, not in their home country on their residential connection.

Rutracker went the other way: they organized donation collection to buy the HDDs to the 'saviours' group, a one-time investment compared to the datacenter server cost. In RU/UA, people usually seed from home.

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konart 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Anime (an everything related) torrent sites are also pretty alive.

	▲	ValdikSS 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Oh no, these don't feel very well either, in a sense that there's only a few seeders of the older uploads, if at all, and by older I mean as old as just a few years old. I'm running my torrent preservation service, and many anime/jrock/jpop downloads start downloading only after weeks or months of waiting for a seeder. Groups and individuals who used to be active on the scene has switched elsewhere and retracted their archives and XDCC bots. There are Chinese torrent-to-web download services which seem to cache already downloaded stuff for a very long time if not indefinitely, sometimes you can download it from there if someone managed to use the service (they don't seed it over bittorrent though).

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omgmajk 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I haven't used a public site since Suprnova so I don't know about the health of public p2p sites at all. The private side is absolutely not stagnant, new sites pop up all the time and you can still find all the niche stuff you want to find by just nudging the enthusiasts with requests.

A lot of them seed from home, with humongous servers, and there are preservation programs going on in various places.

	▲	ValdikSS an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, that's true, but the core reason there are private p2p sites is because you're most likely to get a DMCA violation letter from the watchdog company via your ISP or to you directly in the West. Even if it may be not a punishable offense, that still freaks out people, and they choose not to seed from home or use public websites which are scraped by DMCA watchdogs. I don't see much point in contributing to closed silos (even if I'm present on the majority of invite-only music trackers and occasionally contribute there) because I have ThePirateBay and RuTracker account: it's the same, but it's open for everyone and google-able. Some private trackers disallow accessing them via VPN, which I find super strange. They want to access the website with your residential connection, but they allow seeding via VPN (which many do, because see above). Other private tracker which I used to be on had a timeout on account life time. If you don't log in once in a while (6 months AFAIR), your account will be suspended, even if you're seeding all the content in the torrent client all this time.

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greenavocado 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Indeed, Russia and Ukraine are the last major digital libraries of the history and culture of modern western civilization, which is deeply disturbing to write out in text, and says a lot about how far the west has fallen

▲ muppetman 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Indeed. I'm a member of a few music trackers and they have a lot of great stuff, but What's archive was amazing. One of my proudest things I own is a What.cd beer cooler I bought from them.

	▲	omgmajk 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Never bought any merch from what, but I do own a ScT t-shirt :)

▲ ThatMedicIsASpy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is also simple to download from the streaming services so to me things got as simple as pasting a link in the terminal to rip to no internet places like a car

▲ anal_reactor 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I really struggle to find new music. I feel like I've already listened way too many times to everything I have on my SD card, but I really don't know what to look for. When I was a kid I was very much into rock and everything adjacent so I do have albums of most iconic rock bands. Nowadays I'm more into electronic music. I love a good techno track and I have a folder with 2000-2010 greatest pop-techno bangers. God damn Basshunter gave me more happiness than my entire career combined. At home I often listen to more ambient music, mostly from SomaFM. There's an artist/band called Hello Meteor and the worst album is still 9/10. On the opposite side of the spectrum there's this guy Darren Tate - most of his music is literal trash, but there are a few golden nuggets with how he operates with dynamic range. Like, Prayer For God is absolutely amazing, it's so energetic. But it's really difficult for me to find electronic music that doesn't suck, most DJs make one good track by pure luck while mass-producing slop.

	▲	ValdikSS an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		`- https://dieordiy2.blogspot.com/ - https://dustedmagazine.tumblr.com/ - Last.FM Recommendations based on your bands - Mixtapes and radio mixes, there are countless`
	▲	omgmajk 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Go check out ektoplazm.com, electronic music with permissable licenses. Good for the culture of this website. Most things can be downloaded in flac. Then when you have found a style, soundcloud is likely your home to find stuff and then when you have found it you can either rip it or buy it.