Hello, recently I’ve been on the hunt for a private music tracker to populate my Lidarr Instance, I’ve found REDacted and Orpheus quite appealing, but they’re “hard” to get into and are mostly for audiophiles.
I’m not an audiophile (more like a brokeyphile) and I don’t want to wait 3-5 weeks on something I’ll be just seeding instead of being active, do y’all have any recommendations? All I can offer is seeding 24/7 and a few proofs that I have good ratios
I gave up on private trackers for music tbh I can’t be asked to go through an interview for a tracker to be honest. I also don’t use lidarr I set it up once but gave up because it just does not work well for me I instead find my music (98% of the time) from a different site (not a torrent site it’s a direct download and has early releases updated all the time this is how I find new music aswell + last FM) and the rest I search for and find using slskd (old release s). If you want to use lidarr I would recommend setting up soularr (this needs slskd) or I believe there are lidarr integrations with deemix or others to rip the audio that way. But as said above I don’t use any of that anymore. I’m a huge fan of slsk though
Yea it worked well enough from what I remember. I used it for awhile but ultimately only stoped because it (lidarr) still needs metadata from music brainz and if it’s not there lidarr does not have it. So ultimately for me lidarr is the problem/metadata for artists.
+1 for SoulSeek and Slskd. Been using it for about a month now, and I’ve largely ditched Spotify because of it. Once I get the Arr integration working it’ll be a very nice system. Still deciding how I want to tackle music discovery, but sourcing the songs I know I want has been pretty easy.
There’s also an indev branch of Lidarr with real plugin support. I’ve been using it and https://github.com/allquiet-hub/Lidarr.Plugin.Slskd and it’s working well, although it doesn’t automatically search so it still requires some intervention. Does Soularr?
Music discovery is the primary reason why I’m still using Spotify even though I keep offline copies of albums I like. Spotify’s algorithm for music recommendation isn’t great but it’s not terrible either and I’ve found several albums and songs so far that I really like so I guess it’s worth it.
Yeah, my ideal setup would be a script that uses the Spotify API to fetch my discover weekly, and then if I like a song it goes and downloads the whole album it’s from, with the option of the artists whole discography. I’m slowly working through all my playlists finding the album each song is on, but I should really automate that process.
I had some issues to set up slskd …the yml file is confusing…I had one search with results and right after that my connection went down…couldn’t figure what happened so I stuck with my nicotine+ container…maybe I’ll give it another shot
I’m curious how well polished the stuff you get off of soulseek is. Private music trackers have pretty strict standards for uploads, which generally means making sure that everything is organized consistently, that all tracks are tagged correctly, and that things are encoded to high standards (filtering things like bad transcodes). If you’re having to manually check all of this stuff, it would be pretty time consuming for a large collection.
It’s trivial to reorganize your collection (see Strawberry Music Player if you think it’s not) but when it comes to slsk you see the files, filenames, directory structure, bitrate, and bit depth without downloading. I check all the FLAC albums I download and I haven’t seen a fake one yet. I never download lossy files because I can create a perfect transcode from lossless anyways, and I’m probably transcoding to opus which seemingly nobody else does.
You have to realize that in 2025 we’re all ripping them from Deezer or something where you always get basic tags and proper lossless. I’ve never used a private tracker and never will because slsk gives just as high quality and has less condescending pricks.
I’ve had to put up a lot of obscure music from local bands to keep my ratio on redacted. As someone who has been torrenting for decades, it’s not an easy site.
It’s a great site. So if you can get in, do so. But I wouldn’t use it to fill lidarr, it will kill your ratio and get you banned. It supplements my Usenet for bands that I REALLY want to have now.
The freeleech token distributions are the way to go. I think most RED users got over a hundred for the new year, which was in no way related to its downtime and new domain. :p
Anyway, freeleeching and permaseeding the content you know you already like is the way build ratio, then you can start downloading against your buffer. Takes a while. Truthfully, in the era of cheap(er) streaming and TIDAL downloaders, music piracy sites are becoming more and more obsolete.
I mentioned the RED downtime, which was really prolonged late last year. I was surprised at how little chaos that downtime created—if that had happened ten years ago users would have gone crazy. It’s the case now, though, that music streaming is simply so accessible and relatively inexpensive that having your main music tracker down for months isn’t really detrimental to your everyday access to music.
When I say I’ll use Lidarr I don’t mean like I’ll download it and then delete it a few months later, I normally perma-seed, I just wanted to have a reason to use Lidarr since I’ve set it up lol
Usenet tends to be expensive and quite a shot in the dark especially in Brazil, so I’ll be sticking to Private Trackers for now.
Even perma seeding, redacted is hard. There really aren’t enough seeders to make it worthwhile. You basically need to do what you can to get free leech tokens and then use them wisely.
Lidarr can tank your ratio quick and the time it takes to upload the same amount can be months. Soulseek is another option to help build out your library. But I don’t know if it can be combined with lidarr.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great site and I love it. I just don’t think it’s a good fit for lidarr.
Yeah, Lidarr and Red are not a great fit… Too many options and unless you wrote super complex filters you’d wind up with the weirdest version of each album.
It took a bit to get established there, but with the tokens they’ve been more freely giving lately it’s not too bad. There’s also a point when you are perma seeding that it starts to coast along and just take care of itself… I now see more seeding after I download something ironically.
Seeding is a fickle beast there, but I’m glad to have em.
I just wanted to be a “good Samaritan” and help other users get the music instead of just downloading it once from a random DDL website that will probably be taken down in 3 years.
I technically wouldn’t get in trouble by using a public tracker like RuTracker, but considering how laws are quickly changing in Brazil i think it would be best to thread carefully…
Might I suggest a hybrid approach? Pull from a DDL, verify quality, fix metadata, and then put your whole library up on a searchable DC like Soulseek or a DC++ group(are those even still around anymore?) Torrents if you want to make the effort of compiling the torrents.
I looked at Soulseek and it appeared like a mess of disorganized libraries, random compilations, and I couldn’t even find some major bands or albums on it. But I suppose that’s to be expected.
I use lidarr with the open trackers that come with prowlarr…for known artists is great but for Brazilian music I usually use soulseek with a nicotine + container…It depends on your music taste. More pop stuff you can find with lidarr…I had difficult to find some Brazilian singers (MPB and bossa Nova) …that’s why I tried soulseek…Now I mostly use it for everything though
I’ve found REDacted and Orpheus quite appealing, but they’re “hard” to get into
You just have to interview for either/both of them, they’re not really that hard to get into. Certainly easier to get into vs any of the big movie/tv trackers, none of those have interview to join.
That said if you are already established at other big private trackers then often you may be able to just join via the tracker’s internal forums, tracker recruiters are often found there.
getting into redacted isn’t that difficult, but you might be waiting for a few days trying to get an interview. and it’s very difficult to keep a ratio there, because they don’t have a bonus point system. it’s a very nice library of music that is meant for nobody.
OPS is probably the one you want. RED has more selection but also a very difficult economy. OPS still has a great library and the economy is far more manageable. Of course you will still need to build up a ratio if you’re planning to download a lot
You might want to get on a general tracker like TorrentLeech that has 0day scene releases. But you won’t find as good retention on older releases. It works as a nice supplement to a more selective tracker.
I was ruined by What.CD, haven’t been able to find a satisfactory one since.
But also, with streaming services and smaller file sizes, torrenting isn’t as necessary. I haven’t seen these two listed, so here you go. Each site has a few options and server locations, so you just need to try the different ones until you know which one works. Some offer FLAC, some MP3 320.
For me, Lucida.to searching Amazon seems to be the most reliable.
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I gave up on private trackers for music tbh I can’t be asked to go through an interview for a tracker to be honest. I also don’t use lidarr I set it up once but gave up because it just does not work well for me I instead find my music (98% of the time) from a different site (not a torrent site it’s a direct download and has early releases updated all the time this is how I find new music aswell + last FM) and the rest I search for and find using slskd (old release s). If you want to use lidarr I would recommend setting up soularr (this needs slskd) or I believe there are lidarr integrations with deemix or others to rip the audio that way. But as said above I don’t use any of that anymore. I’m a huge fan of slsk though
Wait, you can connect Lidarr to Soulseek??? Does it work well? It would be a dream come true!
Yea it worked well enough from what I remember. I used it for awhile but ultimately only stoped because it (lidarr) still needs metadata from music brainz and if it’s not there lidarr does not have it. So ultimately for me lidarr is the problem/metadata for artists.
Ok thanks!
Soulseek… checkout slskd, amazing little daemon.
+1 for SoulSeek and Slskd. Been using it for about a month now, and I’ve largely ditched Spotify because of it. Once I get the Arr integration working it’ll be a very nice system. Still deciding how I want to tackle music discovery, but sourcing the songs I know I want has been pretty easy.
Is there an Arr integration for slskd??? What? I need that!
Yes!! Soularr
Thankssss
There’s also an indev branch of Lidarr with real plugin support. I’ve been using it and https://github.com/allquiet-hub/Lidarr.Plugin.Slskd and it’s working well, although it doesn’t automatically search so it still requires some intervention. Does Soularr?
Music discovery is the primary reason why I’m still using Spotify even though I keep offline copies of albums I like. Spotify’s algorithm for music recommendation isn’t great but it’s not terrible either and I’ve found several albums and songs so far that I really like so I guess it’s worth it.
Yeah, my ideal setup would be a script that uses the Spotify API to fetch my discover weekly, and then if I like a song it goes and downloads the whole album it’s from, with the option of the artists whole discography. I’m slowly working through all my playlists finding the album each song is on, but I should really automate that process.
I had some issues to set up slskd …the yml file is confusing…I had one search with results and right after that my connection went down…couldn’t figure what happened so I stuck with my nicotine+ container…maybe I’ll give it another shot
I’m not able to check on my box right now, but I’ll try to take a peak at my configs when I get in front of an SSH connection.
Hey, I just ran my docker compose file today and misteriously it worked! Have no idea what might had happened that day…
Seriously, don’t bother with torrents for music. Soulseek is way more reliable and at least someone has had any thing I’ve ever looked for in FLAC.
I’m curious how well polished the stuff you get off of soulseek is. Private music trackers have pretty strict standards for uploads, which generally means making sure that everything is organized consistently, that all tracks are tagged correctly, and that things are encoded to high standards (filtering things like bad transcodes). If you’re having to manually check all of this stuff, it would be pretty time consuming for a large collection.
It’s trivial to reorganize your collection (see Strawberry Music Player if you think it’s not) but when it comes to slsk you see the files, filenames, directory structure, bitrate, and bit depth without downloading. I check all the FLAC albums I download and I haven’t seen a fake one yet. I never download lossy files because I can create a perfect transcode from lossless anyways, and I’m probably transcoding to opus which seemingly nobody else does.
You have to realize that in 2025 we’re all ripping them from Deezer or something where you always get basic tags and proper lossless. I’ve never used a private tracker and never will because slsk gives just as high quality and has less condescending pricks.
Same, dude. I posted this exact thing recently. https://sh.itjust.works/post/31305538 I’m interested to see if you get a more helpful answer.
Not for Lidarr, but I’ve had good luck finding music I like Soulseek.
Soulseek+lidarr+tidal is how I get everything.
Tidal will give you a 2 month trial for $2 and then there is tidal-dl along with the lidarr extended scripts.
I’ve had to put up a lot of obscure music from local bands to keep my ratio on redacted. As someone who has been torrenting for decades, it’s not an easy site.
It’s a great site. So if you can get in, do so. But I wouldn’t use it to fill lidarr, it will kill your ratio and get you banned. It supplements my Usenet for bands that I REALLY want to have now.
The freeleech token distributions are the way to go. I think most RED users got over a hundred for the new year, which was in no way related to its downtime and new domain. :p
Anyway, freeleeching and permaseeding the content you know you already like is the way build ratio, then you can start downloading against your buffer. Takes a while. Truthfully, in the era of cheap(er) streaming and TIDAL downloaders, music piracy sites are becoming more and more obsolete.
I mentioned the RED downtime, which was really prolonged late last year. I was surprised at how little chaos that downtime created—if that had happened ten years ago users would have gone crazy. It’s the case now, though, that music streaming is simply so accessible and relatively inexpensive that having your main music tracker down for months isn’t really detrimental to your everyday access to music.
When I say I’ll use Lidarr I don’t mean like I’ll download it and then delete it a few months later, I normally perma-seed, I just wanted to have a reason to use Lidarr since I’ve set it up lol
Usenet tends to be expensive and quite a shot in the dark especially in Brazil, so I’ll be sticking to Private Trackers for now.
Even perma seeding, redacted is hard. There really aren’t enough seeders to make it worthwhile. You basically need to do what you can to get free leech tokens and then use them wisely.
Lidarr can tank your ratio quick and the time it takes to upload the same amount can be months. Soulseek is another option to help build out your library. But I don’t know if it can be combined with lidarr.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great site and I love it. I just don’t think it’s a good fit for lidarr.
Yeah, Lidarr and Red are not a great fit… Too many options and unless you wrote super complex filters you’d wind up with the weirdest version of each album.
It took a bit to get established there, but with the tokens they’ve been more freely giving lately it’s not too bad. There’s also a point when you are perma seeding that it starts to coast along and just take care of itself… I now see more seeding after I download something ironically.
Seeding is a fickle beast there, but I’m glad to have em.
Given streaming is so ubiquitous, private music trackers have a hard time having a big enough library to meet all of a users needs.
OPS is great but even they don’t have all the tracks I search for. RED is better since there’s more incentive to upload and more users.
Lucida and other DDL sites listed on fmhy are likely your best bet, aside from maybe rutracker.
https://fmhy.pages.dev/audiopiracyguide#audio-ripping-sites
I just wanted to be a “good Samaritan” and help other users get the music instead of just downloading it once from a random DDL website that will probably be taken down in 3 years.
I technically wouldn’t get in trouble by using a public tracker like RuTracker, but considering how laws are quickly changing in Brazil i think it would be best to thread carefully…
Might I suggest a hybrid approach? Pull from a DDL, verify quality, fix metadata, and then put your whole library up on a searchable DC like Soulseek or a DC++ group(are those even still around anymore?) Torrents if you want to make the effort of compiling the torrents.
I looked at Soulseek and it appeared like a mess of disorganized libraries, random compilations, and I couldn’t even find some major bands or albums on it. But I suppose that’s to be expected.
I just rip from Deezer tbh
I use lidarr with the open trackers that come with prowlarr…for known artists is great but for Brazilian music I usually use soulseek with a nicotine + container…It depends on your music taste. More pop stuff you can find with lidarr…I had difficult to find some Brazilian singers (MPB and bossa Nova) …that’s why I tried soulseek…Now I mostly use it for everything though
You just have to interview for either/both of them, they’re not really that hard to get into. Certainly easier to get into vs any of the big movie/tv trackers, none of those have interview to join.
That said if you are already established at other big private trackers then often you may be able to just join via the tracker’s internal forums, tracker recruiters are often found there.
Discussed in the earlier post https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/35846542
I’ve been using Nicotine+ for SoulSeek and I’ve been able to find just about everything I’ve been looking for.
It has a “Wish List” feature that I’ve used a couple of times.
getting into redacted isn’t that difficult, but you might be waiting for a few days trying to get an interview. and it’s very difficult to keep a ratio there, because they don’t have a bonus point system. it’s a very nice library of music that is meant for nobody.
OPS is probably the one you want. RED has more selection but also a very difficult economy. OPS still has a great library and the economy is far more manageable. Of course you will still need to build up a ratio if you’re planning to download a lot
You might want to get on a general tracker like TorrentLeech that has 0day scene releases. But you won’t find as good retention on older releases. It works as a nice supplement to a more selective tracker.
I was ruined by What.CD, haven’t been able to find a satisfactory one since.
But also, with streaming services and smaller file sizes, torrenting isn’t as necessary. I haven’t seen these two listed, so here you go. Each site has a few options and server locations, so you just need to try the different ones until you know which one works. Some offer FLAC, some MP3 320.
For me, Lucida.to searching Amazon seems to be the most reliable.
https://lucida.to https://squid.wtf