I pirate plenty of games and films, but I haven’t pirated music in years. Recently, I’ve been using FOSS streaming alternatives that hook into Spotify or YouTube to avoid ads.

However, my Android is currently out of service (waiting on a new screen), so I’m using an old Nokia Lumia 1020. In 2025, it’s practically a dumb phone, so I need MP3s, WAVs, or FLAC files to have some sound in my life. I’m struggling to find music—my taste is eclectic and niche, and I’m also lazy. Are there any active communities in 2025 that focus on music piracy with curated playlists?

I’m specifically looking for:

Folk-punk
Post-punk
British indie
Swing

Any advice is welcome!-------

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[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Slskd

[–] xmanmonk@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes, or nicotine +

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Or Seeker (f-droid) on Android

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I couldn't find that one in search.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Oh, sorry. I forgot you'll have to add the IzzyOnDroid repo first

Edit: assuming you're fine with this

DISCLAIMER: As stated above, all .apk files are directly taken from the repositories of their resp. developers. They are provided under FOSS licenses, without any warranty, though we've taken some additional measures to provide our repository with additional transparency and safety checks (see the Security section below).

You can get Seeker directly from its github if that's all you want.

Edit2: there's an app for automating updates for apps installed directly but I can't remember the name.

Edit3: Seeker is also on the play store. 🤷‍♂️

[–] passenger@sopuli.xyz 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The app for updating is obtainium. Highly recommend it.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

That's it! Thank you.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago

Blessings to you, friend!

[–] Cruxifux@feddit.nl 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I still use soulseek. Works great. No I haven’t tried anything else for 15 years.

[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

☞ !soulseek@lemmy.dbzer0.com

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

A hundred times soulseek, all the music nerds are there!

[–] BlueRingedOctopus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nicotine+ for a better interface of Soulseek

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 10 months ago

I'm more of a slskd kind of guy, even if the webapp is pretty terrible

[–] Stez827@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Since it's p2p do I need to use a VPN to not get with a dmca letter?

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 10 months ago

As long as you don't share anything you should be okay! It's not very ethical tough... But you can share your files list with users you trust (for example people you have already downloaded from).

At any rate i never heard of anyone getting in trouble for using soulseek.

[–] felipe@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

doubledouble dot top

cobalt dot tools

lucida dot to

[–] Mynameisallen@lemmy.zip 8 points 10 months ago

Soul seek, although a lot of folk punk bands have their shit for free on bandcamp, all of Pat The Bunny’s stuff at least I’m sure

[–] muhyb@programming.dev 7 points 10 months ago

Try RuTracker.

[–] DeathCubeK@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago

If you're downloading music honestly there's no better alternative than soulseek.

Although I'd get the app nicotine+ it's a graphical client of slsk with a much better UI and more features..

[–] ryxben@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I use Chosic to find music and then download with SquidWTF

[–] BlueRingedOctopus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 10 months ago

Thanks I was looking for something like this for a long time

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I always go back to just torrents.

[–] freebee@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Public torrents suck for music these days. Little available and a lot that is there is FLAC only, no mp3-320

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 10 months ago

Then let's start creating more again. And seed.

[–] RunicSword@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I subscribe to Deezer but use Deemix to download the FLAC files without DRM for my personal library. If the music you want is on Deezer, then you can download it.

[–] Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 10 months ago

If you haven't already done it, Pat (the Bunny) put all his stuff on archive and he's far from the only one.

[–] jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If you're not opposed to doing it yourself, you can sign up for a free trial to Tidal and rip it.

https://github.com/exislow/tidal-dl-ng

[–] stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net 4 points 10 months ago

You have two problems, curation and piracy.

Piracy is easy, get into a few good private trackers or download from YouTube or use soulseek (carefully!).

Curation is harder and if you don’t want to do it yourself you have to make friends with people who are into the same music as you or use the tools of feed based services like Spotify to dump into your piracy rube-Goldberg contraption.

It’s worth not doing the latter because you will end up failing the Dow Jones and the Industrials test if you just stick to only what the machine gives you because it’s what you like.

Go make friends with people and enjoy music, a collaborative hallucination unique to humanity, with them.

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 months ago

I just use RED. The user collages are pretty nice to find new albums.

[–] anon5621@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago

Rutracker,bandcamp, yt-dlp with extract to mp3 :)

[–] sp451@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 10 months ago

Qobuz and OrpheusDL. I used to use Deezer and deemix but it’s hardly possible to find working accounts anymore

[–] gila@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

eu dot qobuz dot squid dot wtf

[–] matzler@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Returns 502 for me :/

[–] stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

You have to have the cookie for squid dot wtf first. Go there.

[–] gila@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Weird, try same with na dot instead of eu dot

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

Oh fuck I didn’t actually answer your question! Sorry!

You want the two major private trackers for music. They both have active communities and all kinds of groupings of releases.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wait, FOSS alternatives that hook? Are they in Fdroid?

[–] crumbguzzler5000@feddit.org 2 points 10 months ago

RiMusic is one I know of

[–] herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

I just download mp3 files from youtube using yt-dlp (laptop) or newpipe (android)

[–] jwiggler@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago

Idk about curated playlists but I use soulseek to share files with my friends.

I like the same genres, I can recommend you some albums I've been liking if you want

[–] SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works 1 points 10 months ago

I like Nicotine for Soulseek, but it's been some time since I got on there, like pre-pandemmy

[–] canine_teeth@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 10 months ago

I get at least 1/3rd of my MP3s the super old fashioned way; by renting CDs from the library and ripping them lol. It does help that I live in a big city with an interconnected library system. Or you could try archive.org.

[–] Chakravanti@monero.town 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Bloodywood

[–] Bags@piefed.social 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

But that's none of those genres...

I would like their stuff so much more if the nu-metal parts went away.

I am unsure what makes something "Swing", but I absolutely adore The Roar of '74 by Buddy Rich. I discovered it via my dumb rule of "See vinyl record with car on it, buy vinyl record with car on it"

[–] Chakravanti@monero.town 1 points 10 months ago

I don't care much for most Metal. either.