Hello pirates! I’ve recently started high school, which means that I now get money from the state, which also means that my parents no longer pay for my Spotify premium. I could probably afford it, but I’d rather save my money, so I’ve been looking into different ways of obtaining music for free.

One thing that really caught my eye is Soulseek. It seems like a good option for my needs + I could set up a server on my raspberry pi to be able to access all of my music from anywhere.

My biggest concern is getting in trouble with the authorities, because my parents would kill me if the cops came knocking on our door due to me pirating stuff. So I was wondering whether it would be worth it to spend some money on a VPN (and which one), or if I should just raw dog it and not use a VPN at all? I live in Sweden, and I haven’t found any cases of people getting arrested for pirating music, but it is technically illegal afaik.

Thankful for any answers!

  • signs23@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    On Android there is xManager (Spotify) and Revanced for YouTube Music. I didnt encounter that many problems over the years. You dont get HighBitrates, but everything else works.

  • coughrelief@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Soulseek is great (use nicotine+) but also check out spicetify (has AdBlock for desktop app plus themes and extensions) and xmanager for Android.

  • 000999@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    If the only reason you want to use soulseek is to save money, then paying for a VPN wouldn’t work out that much cheaper than Spotify premium as far as I’m aware. As you are appear rather paranoid, perhaps a modded Spotify frontend would be best.

    However, a VPN isn’t really necessary for soulseek as it is ptp.

    But, I would actually (obviously) recommended switching to soulseek as that allows you to build your own library of lossless audio files, which then of course involves spending large sums of money on high capacity drives but is a fun hobby to have.

  • tricoro@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    If you really want to pirate safely, I would suggest to use a YouTube downloader. In my phone I just use new pipe (it can download just the audio).

    • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Not sure why this is downvoted. yt-dlp is a great way to get music from YouTube, bandcamp, or other sites.

      • xspurnx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Maybe because YouTube isn’t a good option if you’re looking for good audio quality (same for Bandcamp’s free streams). OP didn’t specify though.

        • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, I tend to think of it like FM radio. Give it a sample run, if you love it go back and buy it in high quality.