Title says it. Is anyone still on the newsgroups? For reasons I need to amass a large collection of music in MP3 format, preferably full albums, and I’d like to do it somewhat quickly. Is there a better place to hunt before I buy news server access? I been on land for too many years.
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I use it exclusively. I think it’s better than worrying about torrents. It almost feels obfuscated with the indexer.
I have not used torrents in years after discovering usenet. You can find the most obscure stuff that is impossible to find on torrents. Plus you are not dependent on seeders, nor do you have to seed yourself. Or the frustration that the torrent stops at 99% and you still can’t play. And to top it off the speed is amazing.
I do want to give a shout out to Kevin who developed the NZB360 app. It’s the best app for usenet and my most used app on my phone.
Usenet is still very much alive.
For music, I use Lidarr (along with the rest of the arr stack) and Headphones as an indexer.
It doesn’t have absolutely everything that I want but enough to make it worth the price.
What’s the benefit of usenet over torrents?
Uses encryption so you can’t be dinged by copyright trolls, high speed downloads (usually), easier automation and higher quality control.
Only note is that it isn’t free.
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Generally don’t need a VPN with usenet because according to isp providers it’s general downloaded content with encryption so they don’t see what you’re downloading
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speed depends on your provider, not seeder counts, meaning that it’s generally much more consistant speeds and can easily reach multi gigabit
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don’t need to worry about seeding at all, instead you have two caps to worry about that reset daily for indexes, api hits and download counts. Generally you get a couple thousand api hits for third party apps or your Starr apps and a few hundred downloads per day.
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older content is generally easier to find on usenet because there is no inactivity deletion due to lack of seeders like on private torrent trackers. The only limitation is your providers retention time generally in the thousands of days range
The one major downside of usenet over torrents is that you pay for access either monthly, yearly, or lifetime for both the provider and the indexer.
And you do need both because the providers give you the ability to download the files and the indexers host the files. So if you have just an indexer you can see the files but not download them or if you have just a provider you have the ability to download the files but can’t find any files to download.
Hope this helps!
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All the time!
Hell yeah. It’s good to have as an alt source in an arr-stack setup. I prioritise torrent since that helps folks who don’t/can’t pay but it’s there when TL falls or smth.
Usenet is still very much a thing.
I use Eweka.nl (Usenet access) and NZBGeek (indexer). Works well.
Yes.
I get my music from slsk though, try nicotine+ (client for soulseek).
Thanks for reminding me to hunt for that one japanese album I can’t find anywhere on usenet though, that’s the only place I haven’t looked. Can’t even buy a physical copy (and would be willing, I’ve been looking so long).
E: OH but be warned, put some files in your slsk share folder before you download, and you can also re-share your downloads folder. Some losers have auto-ban scripts for people “not sharing” which is mostly new people (though they’re too dumb to realize that). Just throw a few albums in your “share” folder (and set that up in settings,) you’ll bypass them. Also, would VPN, preferably with port forwarding but beggars can’t be choosers.
I know Usenet is still alive and well for video, at least. Check out soulseek for music downloads if you want to try avoiding a subscription.
slsk would also be my recommendation for music, though I’m not sure I can recommend in good faith leeching a bunch of music all at once. Unless it’s a pretty even split amongst source users, and OP intends to share afterwards.
lots of people using Usenet.
I have 2 main servers on 2 different networks, but some block accounts as backup and a couple of indexers.
But for music, especially if its anything unusual, rare, or otherwise difficult to locate elsewhere, get onto soulseek. I use N+ personally and have uploaded ~80TB this year so far and downloaded about 600Gb. I dont do torrents very often so SLSK is how I give back to the community.
Soulseek is an old school free file sharing P2P platform, like limewire, kazaa, winmx, ed2k etc. just like the good old days.
That sounds like a great place to start! Many thanks, matey!
Wow, that brings back memories
Loud, screeching memories
A few months ago I needed a lot of music (flacs in my case) and while to can find almost anything on soulseek (including some amazing vinyl rips) some niche artists were missing.
So what I did is I made a free trial account on deezer, got everything I needed during the free month using this deezer scraper and cancelled the trial before it ended.
What’s a deezer?
Yep. Exclusively.
Daily.
