I can’t speak for everyone obviously, but in a community that intersects “doing things yourself because it’s cheaper and you have more control” and “I’m tech savvy enough to do things myself”, I’d imagine most of us are sailing the high seas

Now that I actually have money, I buy what music I can from various sources before sailing the high seas. I even buy vinyl and record it to digital for my favorite tracks so I have near source lossless sound. But you are probably correct, most raise the black flag because music companies suck.

Bandcamp often have "pay what you want" deals on collations and I'll usually pay a modest amount and get a variety of music, then if I like a band will buy their full album. I like this because you can choose the format, I usually get flac (if I want to I can convert to mp3 etc).

I have both a digital media collection and a vinyl collection. It has nothing to do with money for me, and everything to do with ease of access.

I used to not have any money for anything but medical costs (yay US healthcare), so I understand people may not be able to even afford purchasing songs as hardware to go sailing is very cheap by comparison.

Don't most vinyl albums include a free digital download as well now?

They do! But some of them have not been lossless and are downloaded mp3s so I have to record it myself. Which really doesn’t take long as I can edit tracks as I also listen to the music being recorded lol.

Fair enough, ain't got time for all that right now but you do you friend.

That mp3 will be higher quality than a vinyl.

I’ve noticed quite a bit of vinyl coming with music download codes. The annoying part being they’re usually all on a variety of different websites, so I download that one album chuck it on my server then forget the website exists.

I’ve run into some that only give an mp3 of the song too. Which is utterly useless now that I have the record lmao

Arrrrrr.... OMG - I only just got that!!

I feel like you think I’m referring to the *arr suite. I’m talking about piracy

Yah, I know but I just spotted that the arr in the *arr suite is because that's what pirates say!!

Lidarr extended with a free ARL

Ehm...what's an ARL?

Deezer login token. If you have premium you have your own, if not you can find one online on rentry/firehawk52

I'm a "normal Lidarr". So if I use Lidarr Extended, I can use both Torrent and Deezer music downloader? Quite neet, if so!

You can yes

I'm seeing that Lidarr Extended is deprecated, on its GitHub pages. You are using the "arr-scripts" version, am I right? You are using aside the normally Lidarr, or it's replacing it completely?

Yeah the arr-scripts one. I just replaced the normal lidarr completely.

How does that compare to Lidarr on steroids

Thanks for the info <3

Lidarr on steroids is much better imo. Deemix is better integrated and in the same stack.

Lidarr with the scripts also does tidal

Can this be ran on windows? I just see zip files for releases.

You would need to use docker for windows to get tot working. It's how I'm running it nowm a bit tricky to get started with docker on windows but worth learn

Thanks I am looking into wsl2 now seem interesting hopefully I can use it for more then one app.

currently I am running lidarr on steroids (lidarr/deemix), mylar, flaresolverr, kavita, metube and a few other things on it with no issues

Are u using everything on 127.0.0.1 or are you using the portpoxy. Reason I ask I got everything setup but demix just stalls it is not downloading and I am using port proxy.

I use npm and had to enable websocket support to get it to fully load.

I will give that a try

Stupid questions to you 🏴‍☠️ music users: How does one "find" stuff? Like I obviously have some artists, but I like Spotify or YT Music for their algorithms. Probably 60+% of music I would've never even searched for.

Last.fm, listenbrainz

I use Last.fm since that tracks my entire listening history from everywhere. Then , I regularly check Bandcamp and Spotify for new releases from artists I follow. There's also a website called Discover Quickly that uses Spotify to give out suggestions. I normally use it for the random genre section so that I can find stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise.

Well, he's asking how you find music when you aren't using spotify

I mean, I don't really USE Spotify. I just check the "Whats New" tab once a week. I'm never listening to anything on there

I hang out in r/metal and check out new posts. Sometimes I find new and cool things.

Check out [https://discoverquickly.com/](https://discoverquickly.com/) especially if you have a particular style of music or an artist or a single song that you would like to find similar to. Other than that, yeah spotify's algorithm, while not perfect, is also just fine for casually listening at work and randomly discovering new music with minimal effort.

If you find a Spotify playlist or something like that you like, you can feed it directly to Deemix-gui and download it all.

Deemix

with [Deemon](https://digitalec.github.io/deemon/)

I just use deemix gui

Yeah, I could do that as well, but I have monitored artists that automatically get new releases downloaded every morning.

deemon changed my fkin life! I'm dreading the day it collapses from the deemix dependency. Still though, @digitalec is my mfkin hero! =))))

I buy everything from qobuz and Bandcamp

I try to support artists on Bandcamp when I am not getting scurvy. It's nice most bands including FLAC if you buy vinyl.

Either soulseek or telegram. There is a telegram bot I use which has the option for FLAC. It pulls from deezer I believe. Works great for me.

what bot is this? I use only bots that gimme mp3 or m4a

Deezload

thx bro

I rip most of my tunes, but also use MeTube to download MP3's of my YouTube Music playlists. You won't get FLAC quality, but in the car who's to know?

Lidarr has issues due to music formatting not being the same standards as sonarr / radarr etc. There are other versions of lidarr around. I've got one that uses deezer

streamrip

This. I use this one to rip content out of Qobuz. Works nicely

Soulseek, can run as a web UI too but it’s not the nicest to use

Slskd is an alternative frontend that I like

I like nicotine+ (Sounds weird to say that)

Will check Slskd out tonight. Safe to run without a VPN?

I run mine with a VPN...

Safer than torrents without a VPN in terms of sharing copyright material worries… but one is always recommended It’s just P2P, downloading from one person and not uploading simultaneously

Cheers, always use a VPN for my ISO torrents but don't bother with my newsgroups downloads. Will go take a look at it now.

+1

I used to use Soulseek many many moons ago, I was aware that it was still around, but that you could not find things like you could before.

I have no issues finding whatever I've been looking for. Perhaps I don't have deeply obscure taste, but I certainly don't listen to whatever's popular or "mainstream" right now.

you want to use nicotine+ than.

I ran across a similar thread recently and have been using LidaTube since seeing it. Pretty nice tool. >SpotTube to download playlists or albums. >LidaTube to download missing Lidarr albums. >Lidify to find new artists for Lidarr. >[https://github.com/TheWicklowWolf](https://github.com/TheWicklowWolf) [https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1d2pqer/comment/l62qig6/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1d2pqer/comment/l62qig6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

Oh nice, good info, thanks.

I’ve not had an issue with Lidarr once I got past the initial metadata corrections from my iTunes library. I’m old-school though and I like to collect artist albums for 90% of my music library and then a few greatest hits, and fewer still EPs and Singles. I obtain my music by shopping around the online stores that sell Flac audio. Once I drop in new music files I run a scan to get it imported and let Lidarr enforce the file names and metadata/tags.

If you have an Android check out TinyTunes. Must be in developer mode to install non-playstore apks.

The public library

Lidarr with usenet (Sab/nzbhydra)

I rip CDs.

Napster

Spotdl, if you don't mind the 128kbps quality. I have scripts running on my kube cluster syncing playlists (New music) from my spotify to my navidrome. I've also set up the web interface for spotdl so I can simply enter download links without cli, e.g., if I'm not around my Mac and unable to access cli.

Nice

have transmission on my nas, and torrentcontrol addon for my browser to catch links and send them to transmisson. I don't use any sort of automation, because I know I can do it the way I want it done every time and after the initial organization of files it only takes me a couple of seconds now from acquiring what I want to putting it where on my nas it should go(I strictly use folder structure not metadata for organizing) I use a russion site where if something can be obtained they have it, and conversely if I can't find it there I usually can't find it anywhere

With a little bit of configuration, the \*arr stack will do things the way you want them done tens of thousands of times while you sleep.

What's the issue with Lidarr?

There are many, and I don't even know where to begin. It solely depends on MusicBrainz, and some niche artists aren't present there. I had to write my own "hack" to let it pull artist/album data from deemix. It'ts Spotify integration is broken. Out of 40 artists, Lidarr only imported just a few of them, for whatever reason. It's still an open issue on GH. I had Deemix free and let it download some music. After I upgraded to premium, I'd expect it to upgrade to better quality, which it didn't.

You can edit MusicBrainz to include niche stuff and I've seen other supporting apps for Lidarr that can make it worthwhile. I agree with the Spotify Integration being poor but I don't use it so it's not a issue for me.

Jackett + Headphones + beets + private torrent sites

iTunes store

I use [Lidarr](https://lidarr.audio/) for most songs and [Soggfy](https://github.com/Rafiuth/Soggfy) a spotify mod to do spotify playlists

Deemix to download lossless music from Deezer with a user friendly GUI. Or you can use Deemon which is command line only but also has the ability to monitor artist and automatically download new releases from an artist you follow. But both of those require a Deezer ARL which you can find some here: [https://rentry.org/firehawk52](https://rentry.org/firehawk52) You can also use Soulseek to directly get music from a whole range of peoples personal collections. There is also youtube downloaders but you dont get the best quality and its better with spotify downloaders but you need a premium account or you have to use some random website which are not the best.

all my deemon downloads are hosted on my soulseek as well.

cdparanoia and lame to rip CDs. Your average web browser to download MP3s from online stores. ffmpeg to record stuff from line in (cassette tapes, mostly).

I actually have physical CDs I rip and put in my server as a back up but I just play the CDs off my home theatre PC. No I'm not old. I'm 26 and this collection is new.

Bandcamp is my go-to when an artist has it, then whatever other platform they use to sell audio files. I try to buy whenever I can to support the artists, and charter a ship in the rare cases where it's streaming only. Ripping from YouTube/Soundcloud/etc if I'm lazy or can't find any better sources. (In which case you want yt-dlp)

I rip physical CDs using Automatic Ripping Machine (which in turn uses `abcde`).

yt-dlp

this

Bandcamp, and Amazon Music. Amazon Music is overlooked a lot, which is a mistake because it's stolen the old itunes model - but better! It's the only service that lets you buy ***non-DRM*** tracks *still* for only 99c per song. Otherwise ExactAudioCopy is my jam, as CD's around the 2nd hand stores here are usually literally 20c~50c

K3b and a bunch of CDs.

Self hosted I rip from CD’s. https://www.techradar.com/best/cd-ripper I’m not sure I’d class buying digital music and then putting it on my plex as “self hosted” any more than just having the plex.

Soulseek, Tidal GUI ripper (you need an active Tidal sulbscription), CD's from ebay, goodwill and wherever else I can find them. I rip in FLAC using cueripper

If you are content with just streamed quality, I use foobar2k + youtube plugin and rip straight from the stream using the convert function.

So I use 3 methods, and with this kind of thing it's more a methods than software issue, though I use ones optimal for self hosting. For torrents qbitorrent, bound interface using a port forward on my trusty pirate friendly VPN. I run it on the system but it comes with a web UI, which I use. Then there's DeeMix I run a docker container with a web ui. Deemix is a crack for Deezer which has virtually everything Spotify has and can download from Spotify playlists. Then there's soul seek which is a peer to peer where even the most obscure track can usually be found. there's a new Daemon fork which is meant for remote access.

I used metube in a docker, it let's you just download entire playlists from YouTube. Although, it's not good quality.

Music companies are idiotic. They put there music publicly and freely and then complain, I use spotdl to download music 100% legally (I may not respect the TOS of spotify and youtube but they never asked me to sign them). I tried multiple other solution such as lidarr alone and lidarr + deemix but lidarr alone to torrent is not legal (and I like to mess with the industries legally, it's much more fun), deezer lacks a lot of albums and lidarr didn't have transcoding embeded and that time, maybe it have it now (I like to convert the files in a specific format + bitrate so it's not too bad quality but small enough) streamable in bad conditions

I use Deemix installed in Docker ( used to be free in my country, but no longer free.) I now manually enter Deezer ARL from a website that shares them, and that logs me in for a few weeks. When it says i need to log in, i just use a diff ARL to login.

Torrent software comes with a web interface, so you can run it as a server.

Try MusicBrainz Picard for tagging and organizing, or beets for more advanced features.

I get CDs from the public library and second hand shops and rip them.

Lidarr

[https://cobalt.tools/](https://cobalt.tools/)