submitted 2 months ago by thestrike to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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I am sharing about 25 albums on soulseek but my uploads are empty which as far as I know means nobody has tried to download anything from me. I don't have port-forwarding available to me, I use a VPN, and I am periodically offline. Is it really weird that nobody has downloaded anything from me or is that kind of normal?

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[-] The_Helmet_Stays_On@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 months ago

That would be normal as it depends on what albums and what formats you have. I use a VPN and I can go days without any uploads but then suddenly someone will download everything I have by one artist.

[-] lIlIllIlIIIllIlIlII@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 months ago

Only people with open port can download from you if your port is not opened. If you have a small bandwidth you will have fewer uploads too. 25 albums are few albums. Try sharing more albums to get more chances of someone getting them. I will say that is normal to not have uploads in these conditions.

[-] belluck 9 points 2 months ago

I have Port Forwarding and have had exactly 1 Upload in the year since I’ve started using it. I guess if you don’t have fast internet, popular music is usually gonna be offered by people with better internet so there’s no reason to download from you, while niche music isn’t gonna be downloaded much because it’s niche.

[-] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 months ago

Reading this thread and lots of people saying no uploads is normal. I know most of what I share is pretty niché but I upload 100s of things every day and I thought that was normal :/

[-] dan@upvote.au 6 points 2 months ago

You need to have port forwarding enabled to upload. Get a better VPN that allows port forwarding :) AirVPN is usually the recommended VPN to use with Soulseek.

Either that or pay for a seedbox (a remotely hosted server than you can run P2P file sharing apps on) and run Soulseek on it.

[+] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 months ago

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[-] dan@upvote.au 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

How is the downloader going to ask the uploader for the file without an open port?

[+] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago

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[-] Fiery@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Edit: I stand somewhat corrected, according to what I can find after diving into the slsk rabbit hole a bit, it basically is like torrenting, except each "request" only goes to a single client instead of the swarm, so while the below comment still applies to the speed of making a connection, the downloader won't have gotten it from somewhere else as they'll have been waiting for you.

It is required to initiate a connection from the downloading side though. If your port is closed the only way a connection can be established is by periodic polling by your client... And unless the content you have is really niche, by the time you reach out the downloader probably will have gotten it from someone that was available.

[-] dan@upvote.au 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Soulseek is a totally different protocol to torrents. It doesn't use a tracker. Files are per-user. When you download a particular file, it only comes from one user. It's like how Limewire and KaZaA used to work (since it's from that same era)

[+] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

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[-] dan@upvote.au 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

There's no tracker. Your link just says that there's a central search and chat room server. The search just points your client to users that have files with that name. It doesn't track anything else.

The server does not know which files you download - that's just between you and the person you're downloading from. You can download files directly from a user (e.g. by searching for a username then browsing their files) without relying on the central server at all.

You don't need port forwarding for downloads, only for uploads.

[+] MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago

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[-] dan@upvote.au 0 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Just because a bunch of posts are misinformed doesn't mean that they're right. There's a lot of misinformation online, especially on Reddit.

Reading either the source code for a Soulseek client, or the unofficial protocol documentation, will help you have a better understanding of how it actually works.

If you look at that document, you will see that there are no server messages related to uploading or downloading files, meaning the server is not involved.

Searches are distributed amongst peers, similar to what DHT does (but it's its own protocol). The server does know about a small number of peers, which then distribute the search to other peers connected to them, etc. in a tree hierarchy: https://nicotine-plus.org/doc/SLSKPROTOCOL.html#distributed-messages

Soulseek's official documentation for v157 (https://www.slsknet.org/157.html) describes it as such:

the soulseek search distribution network is a simple hierarchy where clients are connected to other clients in child/parent relationships. the construction is done dynamically with the server constantly trying to push clients off of itself (only for the purpose of sending search requests) and on to other clients

File transfers are entirely peer to peer. There is no tracker or any other central server involved. The FileTransferInit command (which starts the transfer) goes directly to the other peer that has the file you're requesting: https://nicotine-plus.org/doc/SLSKPROTOCOL.html#file-transfer-init

Getting the list of files a user has is also entirely peer to peer - no central server is involved.

[-] drkt@scribe.disroot.org 4 points 2 months ago

If you can't open a port, yes.

[-] mouseirl@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago

does uploading work at all if you don't have ports forwarded? i didn't get any uploads before i finished setting up port forwarding.

besides that, i run a ~24/7 instance, share around 500 albums, but only have a few uploads per day. i think no uploads is normal, assuming people can reach you.

[-] lIlIllIlIIIllIlIlII@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago

You will have uploads for other users with open port.

[-] Ilandar@lemmy.today 3 points 2 months ago

I can't remember what the default client is like, but Nictone+ sorts by user speeds (by default). So unless people are looking for specific encodings, they're always going to download from the fastest user (the top result). If you're not among the fastest and/or don't have a niche library, you're not going to see much traffic.

[-] lemmywinksthegerbilking@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago

i used to have this problem too but as my library grew and grew (now at 60GB) I upload daily to multiple users

this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026

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