I have found most of the things I want through a combination of piratebay and 1337x for torrents, soulseek, librevox for old stuff and a library app. I have then mirrored what I have got via torrents up on to soulseek.

I have recently been using the scribd free trial so might be worth checking there, they do a 30 day free trial then when you go to cancel the sub they will offer an additional 30 days free too.

I ran into issues with sometimes not being able to view some other users files when I requested a list of what they were sharing, but I don’t really know the ins and outs of how it all works, I just know that plenty of people downloaded a lot of stuff from me so it must have been working for some people :)

https://lemmy.ml/c/dubstep I have been posting over here, if you like some dubstep come join in :D

Also https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/c/trap here for some trap.

I have been using soulseek for the last 6 months without port forwarding and plenty of people have downloaded a lot of stuff from me, however I have just switched to airvpn as well and can confirm now have port forwarding so Im hoping more people can access my files!

I absolutely do where I can but when a lot of stuff gets released within the scene I am into on a dead inferior format (vinyl) exclusively then I am absolutely going to pirate that shit if I can.

Found this looking for a beatmatch or dj community. Did you have any luck finding any?

Beatmatch specifically was great as it wasn’t as gate keepy in my experience.

I use Asgard along with real debrid which will populate your search results with torrents as well as other results and has been working well for me for a while now.

Love me some soulseek and looking through everything people get from me.

In terms of rooms I don’t converse with anyone in them but I do always sit in the dubstep room purely because 90 percent of what I have is dubstep so I hope that people might see my name in the list and then explore my files allowing them to find some music they are interested in (hopefully)

I wouldn’t even think to look for movies on there unless maybe I couldn’t find what I wanted on any of the torrent sites so maybe that is what is happening, people come there as a last ditch attempt to find what they want?

I’ll have a browse through what you have. If you want “real dubstep” then gimme a search “music4cheese”

The music I play is pretty damn niche and soulseek has been great for finding a lot of things that I just simply wont get anywhere else. Unfortunately it is also a genre full of elitest gatekeeping “vinyl only release” cunts so it naturally draws the locked file crowd.

If i wasnt poor then I would make it my mission to buy up and rip all the vinyl only releases just to make them available to everyone. Sadly I am poor xD

Im pretty sure, at least in my case, they do have the files. The music I play is pretty damn niche so it wouldnt be worth it for someone to try and run a scam like that imo. Although for more mainstream stuff that could be a possibility, but then if it is more popular usually there are many people sharing it unlocked.

Fuck knows xD

Same! I look through my uploaded list and read what other people are getting from me with a warm fuzzy feeling!

In a similar vein people on soulseek who have all their files locked unless you trade with them, particularly the ones who want gift vouchers and shit like that I feel goes against the community spirit of piracy as a whole. If I get hold of something rare or that has broken street date i’m excited to share it with others who may no be able to get it for whatever reason.

Really pisses me off scrolling through my search results seeing loads of lock symbols with user info listing demands that must be met for you to be oh so privaledged enough to receive a right to download from them. It goes against what I grew up knowing piracy to be, I’m guessing I am a similar age to you though.

And to all you soulseek users listing locked files with lists of demands to access them. Fuck you.

Pirate bay is fine as long as you use common sense with the files you are downloading. I still use it for audiobooks and some movies and it is absolutely fine.

A lot of these shows are free on their respective streaming service (ITVX for Love Island for example), are you not able to use a VPN to access them?

Another vote for trying soulseek if you haven’t already. Best place for music imo.