This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/piracy by /u/oreocereus on 2026-05-31 02:15:30+00:00.

Finally giving up on Spotify. I still have a large harddrive with music from 10-20 years ago from a mix of physical media and private trackers. I’m going to go back to a blend of direct purchases + downloading to try new stuff. Back in the day, private trackers were a great way to find a good quality source of some underground hardcore band from the other side of the world.

None of the private trackers I was on still exist, and I always struggled to maintain upload ratios.

The landscape seems to have changed a fair bit, and I’m struggling to get my head around the basic “how should I do this safely” question. Basically feeling a bit of information overwhelm reading through the wiki with how out of touch my knowledge is.

Soulscape and Monochrome seem to come up pretty frequently for sources looking at recent threads. Are these sources + a good VPN the simplest, and a reasonably secure way to go?

I understand torrents aren’t very safe unless one has a private tracker. Is that understanding correct?

What’s your method/tools for downloading music with low personal risk? What sources do you use to find downloads?