written by RichCat06 on June 4, 2022 (updated September 22, 2022) (updated again on December 1, 2022) (updated yet again on January 31, 2023) (title updated on February 13, 2023)
Do you remember collecting MP3s (or as some typically stupid rich putzes call it, MUSIC PIRACY, which is morally correct btw, and is only illegal because of Disney's lobbying, corrupt asses.) Well, in the age of streaming services, some may say , "the hell do you need to collect MP3s for when you have all these songs at your fingertips?" I'm here to tell you that they are stupid and that if they get a swift kick in the ass, it's the highest possibility it's warranted.
So, what are we waiting for? Don't wanna leave you waiting, so let's get started!
To start off, you're gonna need a place to download your music from. If you're coming back here and you're looking for the link to YouTube-DL-GUI, I've changed up the process a bit for something a hell of a lot better. Soulseek is a platform chock full of music from well known artists to even some underground ones! You can find music in very high quality audio formats there and on another place known as Free MP3 Download. ***I am in no way affiliated with these guys. No fucked up sponsorship deal either. ;). Free MP3 Download is the easier of the 2 (just search for what you're looking for, and boom! check the captcha, click download, and you're on your way!) But Soulseek has a lot more (and I mean a BOATLOAD more.) The only thing you need is an account (no email is required. Just a username and a password!)
Of course, you're gonna need a player for your MP3s. I've tried many different music players, but I tend to crawl back to these two. They are both wonderful players for the desktop. Clementine only works on Windows as a 32 bit application, but I like the 64 bit fork of the software, Strawberry. Strawberry tends to handle large collections better (for example, mine. I have about 2,000 songs in my collection.) You can create playlists, assign tags to your music, or, if you're lazy, you can just have MusicBrainz finish it off for you, which I think is just wonderful.
These are 2 very good torrent trackers you can get FLACs or MP3s off of. But first, you're gonna need to know how to use and download torrents, but I'll make an article about that on my blog soon and add a link here to the article as soon as it's up. You're gonna need to set up an account to use RuTracker, but with 1337x, you won't need one. There's a lot more stuff on RuTracker than there is on 1337x when it comes to music. You'll need a web page translator to use RuTracker if you don't understand Russian though.
Of course, you're gonna need torrent applications if you ever do start getting into torrents! qBitTorrent is the best option when it comes to this sort of stuff! BiglyBT is pretty good too (and the speeds, in my opinion, are much faster,) but if you want something that has a lot more options in it, then I'd go for qBitTorrent.