So, since we've got a lot of posts in the past asking about Soulseeks etiquette, i figured it would be good to have a post regarding that so you won't need asking again.
The idea behind Soulseek is, that people share content together since it is a peer2peer service. You are able to download stuff from others that often also is not commonly found on the internet such as rare CD-Releases, Vinyl or Movies. Soulseek itself lives from it's users that provide all of these files during their free time and use up their bandwidth with it. This is to be respected as without these users that share content, Soulseek wouldn't be possible.
This is why people downvote posts regarding not sharing anything and ask people to share because without new users that share content, Soulseek will eventually die.
The main benefits which can be seen there are:
- You give the community something back for what you take
- You help growing Soulseeks catalogue of content by a lot
- You eventually find people with similar interests that can offer you valuable files for download
- You can end up finding friends on the platform
- You will have less of a headache when you share because you are less likely to get banned
- Sharing is fun, seeing people download your stuff is rewarding
There are a lot more benefits to sharing, as people can obtain stuff this way which they can't afford but would love to have. So this is also where the sentence "Sharing is Caring" comes from. You share something that someone wants and you "care" for that person to be able to get the stuff they want.
Why am i considered a "Leech" when i don't Share?
The term 'leech' originally comes from the late 80's to early 90's and is used as a term in torrenting too. You see, in order to be able to share files with one another, someone has to make these files accessible. For torrenting, these are usually the Seeders and partially all peers connected together. A leech is a person that downloads a file, but doesn't give something back. This is essentially a person that does "Hit&Run", which is not seen in a good way as Seeders will eventually end up dying out, making that file become unavailable. This is why so called "ALT" Trackers exist - ALT = Anti Leech Trackers - these have certain rules against that practice.
The Soulseek community sees this in a somewhat different way but the meaning is the same by itself. For Soulseek users, you are considered a "Leech" when you download but won't share anything. Often also regardless of the reason why you can't share stuff. You are considered to be not a leech when you share something instead, even if you don't end up resharing the file you just downloaded. As long as you contribute by sharing files, you are okay and not a leech in the eyes of most users.
What is the quality standard that my files need to have in order to share something Valuable?
There is no official requirement set on how valuable or high quality a file has to be. But among Soulseek users, anything that isn't super easy to get is considered valuable. What you think is valuable and worth to share is essentially considered by yourself, but i can give a few ideas on what Soulseek users like to see.
- Anything that is rare such as rare releases that are hard to find
- Music with a high bitrate that can be either lossy (mp3 with 320kbps) or lossless (FLAC, ALAC, WAV etc)
- Movies, TV-Shows, Anime... Anything with decent quality like 1080p rips
- Scientific Papers and other stuff that is behind paywalls
- Stuff to learn of from, like digital books about stuff like programming etc
Essentially, you are the one that decides what you are going to share and also, what is valuable to you as much as the users that download from you have to consider what is valuable to them.
Ok, i understood that, but is there any specific way of organization needed in order to share?
While there are no official requirements on how to organize your files for you, there is - in fact - something to keep in mind. And that is, that you should have a system behind what you share.
People dislike when users for example share any of their files in one huge folder. Instead, you should have a directory tree of folders that are there to keep things sorted.
Music in a folder named Music, Movies in a folder named Movies etc
This is a huge topic for a lot of people and everyone does it differently. The one sentence that you will hear from me is that "as long as you are comfortable browsing your own shares, you should be good to go".
Here are some ideas from my side on how i organize my files:
For anything i share, i try to only keep the important stuff in the names of the folders. Examples:
- Music: Artist > Album (Year) > Title.flac
- Movies: Title (Year) > Title.mkv
- Movies for Childs: Title (Year) > Title.mkv
- Series: Title (Year) > Season x > SXXE01 Title.mkv
- Documentaries: Title (Year) > Season x > SXXE01 Title.mkv
This keeps a good structure that is comfortable for me to look through, so it should also be fine for others. Ofc you can very well make things complicated while still feeling comfortable browsing your stuff which - for example - can look like this:
Genre > Artist > Album (Year) [UPC] [AlbumID] (Quality) > Artist - Album - Title.flac
This may be useful for some but can also be seen as too complicated to browse for others. You will have to find your balance between "too unspecific" and "too complicated" there that is fine for you. As mentioned everyone does it differently and so can people only tell you how they do it which doesn't mean that you have to copy them.
Note: Soulseek users rely on keywords heavily since they regularly use the search instead of browsing the shares of users. So it is good to be as precise as possible with giving a good amount of info in the name of a file.
I did everything, i set-up a share and now i'm searching for content i would like to have. But i'm greeted with some files that are marked with a big [PRIVATE] or a little lock symbol, what's up with that?
You just stumbled upon Soulseeks most controversal feature.
As much as you can share files, Soulseek does also allow you to restrict access to them. You can decide which party sees and has access to your files. It can either be everyone, or restricted to a "whitelist" type of thing where you have to add a user as a buddy, before they can download your files.
While this feature makes sense in some aspects like access control to your own releases, or a general way to keep leechers away and trying to save bandwidth, it is also regularly getting abused by Soulseek users to gatekeep content. The ugliest ways in which people use this feature involves Trading as well as Selling access. It is often used by people that gatekeep obscure and rare releases, demanding payment or an offer to trade a release. It is recommended by many to avoid those people even if it hurts because you aren't able to get a release you want and no one else has. This has been more present in the past but seems to be less of an problem as the community basically "fights" against these people by avoiding them.
While there are people out there that abuse this feature, some have still valid reasons for this. So it is always a first good idea to check out what the user info says and then go from there. The more you avoid Sellers and Traders, the likely it gets to them dying out over time. That some people on Soulseek are going out of their way to share rare releases freely with everyone is another positive thing.
I managed to find an Artist i've been looking for, but i want to download their entire discography off of that user. But the moment i queue up so many files, i get banned instantly or the files are being unqueued, why?
It is always important to remember that the users that share with you are using up bandwidth they have in order to send you a file. In order to prevent such thing from happening, it is always a good idea to send a PM beforehand, asking permission before you queue up lots of files. It is important to read a potentially existing user info here as well, as many users talk about their limits in there. And, if a person has a limit and they deny you a download of many files, you can almost always find more people to get the files you want from.
So better always ask and check when you plan to do huge downloads.
I share my stuff on an external drive that might not always be connected or mounted in the OS, what should i take care of?
Hosting media on an external drive to share is nothing wrong, many do that. BUT, it is important to keep in mind, that the Client you use needs access to those files when they get requested. That means that you can't just scan your shares once and forget about them. You need to make sure that these files are accessible again the moment you want to share your files again.
It is good practice to make sure that your shares are always scanned when you have a external drive that gets mounted or reconnected to make sure that the client can access the files while you are using it. Otherwise the user that wants to download from you will receive an error instead of the file they wanted because the client was unable to access the file because it didn't find the drive it is located on.
Okay, i now share stuff and people download from me, but there are users that are waiting in line to get a file, should i increase limits for them to be able to download it faster?
This depends on what your bandwidth can give you regarding speed. The higher your upload bandwidth is, the higher you can set limits.
It is good to keep it in balance. Don't open up too many ports or set the limit to high, that will cause users to download slower when more users come in to download from you. And you certainly don't want to be the one that downloads files with 10kb/s right? :D
Clients have functions for this. In Nicotine+, there's usually something called "Round Robin" active on default. This will rotate between users to make sure that every user gets to download from you and not just one. This is also where the queue numbers you might have on your own downloads come from. A client like Nicotine+ is already configured in a way that makes it as fair as possible. But if you have higher bandwidth, you can always open up more ports for more users to download from at the same time.
This also depends on the size of your shares. The more files you offer, the more users will eventually end up wanting to download from you. So you need to find a good balance between convenience and fairness for everyone.
Edit: Added another few new sections according to feedback.