I've been building up my digital music library again after giving music streaming the boot. I was going to attempt to digitize my CD and vinyl collection, but I frankly don't have the time for all that. So I thought I might turn to file-sharing and download digital versions of my physical collection. I prefer FLAC or WAV if the former isn't available. Can you recommend good places to get started?

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[–] pedro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 42 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Nicotine+, a soulseek client

[–] ponchow8NC@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Dumb question since its peer to peer that means you'll need port forwarding if using nicotine+ over a VPN right?

[–] orize@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Unless VPN allows port forwarding (Proton does for example)

[–] junusdenised420@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

the megathread has good sources, i personally use lucida

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 weeks ago

Lucida is great especially from Qobuz !

[–] drkt@scribe.disroot.org 25 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

My list in order of desperation, lowest first

Soulseek
Public torrent trackers
Private torrent trackers
Spotify rippers (they come and go like waves on a beach)
yt-dlp youtube rip (please god have mercy on my bit-crushed soul)

[+] quirzle@lemmy.zip 9 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 weeks ago (3 children)

Most of the publicly available ones that rip streaming services to lossless fail spectral checks. They can rip high quality MP3s which they then transcode to flac but if you were to upload this somewhere like RED you’d get shit for it. Literally every one I’ve found has failed the spectral check thread on RED

This MAY not apply for Spotify as they don’t stream lossless to begin with

The people that can actually rip fully lossless files from deezer, apple music, qobuz, tidal, etc guard that info like crazy. The second the method gets public you better believe all those companies are patching it out. Plus it probably doesn’t hurt that being the one with the keys to the method gets you like infinite ratio

[–] BerenstainsMonster@kbin.earth 6 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I work part time as an audio producer. Converting MP3 to FLAC is like trying to upscale an image: you can use all the fancy algos to repair loss, but it's still lossy.

[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 weeks ago

yes, you can't add to the sound something that's no longer there by just reformatting the mp3 to flac

[–] heavydust@sh.itjust.works 19 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm late to the party since it is a well-known site but rutracker is quite good for FLAC content.

[–] dewritochan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 weeks ago

seconding this, rutracker and rutor are my go to's

[–] baines@lemmy.cafe 12 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

what.cd and a time machine

[–] uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca 8 points 4 weeks ago

Ugh, knife to my heart

[–] coldsideofyourpillow@lemmy.cafe 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

redacted.sh, no time machine needed

(Interview Preparation Site)

[–] Noggog@programming.dev 11 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

I use Deezer. You pay for it per month like Spotify, but they have API to just download the songs straight up. I think the open source UI I've been using for that is on the rocks a bit, but do far still been working for me

https://www.reddit.com/r/deemix/comments/zlswiz/last_update_is_now_out/

[–] BerenstainsMonster@kbin.earth 1 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

This doesn't sound like what I'm asking for. I'm not interested in paying Deezer for music I already own.

[–] Noggog@programming.dev 13 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Sure sure! Just a fallback to consider if you have trouble locating elsewhere, as I did. Spotify rippers were noticably bad quality, and torrents for music were very scarce compared to other media types. But maybe I missed something or there's better options now. Dropping $10 for a month to mass download everything at crisp quality isn't too bad an option, imo.

[–] BerenstainsMonster@kbin.earth 2 points 4 weeks ago

I appreciate it. I always thought Deezer was just a streaming platform like Spotify.

Also, dang, surprised so many downvotes for my original comment lol.

[–] butter@midwest.social 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Not gonna lie, I'm considering paying for Deezer to move back to this.

You can automate downloads with Lidarr. I'm set up to download every song by every artist that Last.FM recommends.

Currently, I'm using Soularr, but it's really slow and not always FLAC and not always full albums and the metadata is not always perfect.

[–] Noggog@programming.dev 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah, nice. I gotta do the reverse and check out Soularr a bit. I imagine my Deezer setup will eventually implode, so I'll need a fallback haha

[–] butter@midwest.social 4 points 4 weeks ago

At the very least, be sure to put your current library out on soulseek.

[–] ThunderLegend@sh.itjust.works 7 points 4 weeks ago

I use nicotine+ to download my music and it's great! I can find almost everything I want to hear in flac. Maybe not the best choice for playlists but for downloading albumns is awesome

[–] ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 weeks ago

only thing I would add to this thread is occasionally usenet can be handy if you’re looking for music that’s fairly mainstream. If you’re looking for some weird 7” that was self released with 50 copies that’s obviously not gonna work though

[–] mastersamwise@lemm.ee 4 points 4 weeks ago

I’ve been using lucida to download from Tidal. It works very well.

[–] Waffle@infosec.pub 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Not exactly what you're looking for in terms of being free, but you could get a Qobuz subscription then use Qobuz-dl to snag what you want to download in lossless quality.

[–] Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 weeks ago

This is what I do. The streaming subscription isn’t that much, and I can download a single album or a txt file with multiple album links with just one command. Only downside of the streaming subscription is you will occasionally run into albums that are or have purchase-only tracks that you can’t download without buying the album, but I don’t seem to run into those too often.

Managed to get my entire library in FLAC except for one album - “I Love You Because,” the soundtrack to what is apparently an obscure musical based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”.

[–] Kissaki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Other than file-sharing or xdcc, where you can search for FLAC,

squid.wtf allows you to download FLACs from select providers.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It seems to consistently throw a WebAssembly is not defined error.

[–] Kissaki@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

A while ago when I last used it one of the two services worked while the other didn't. Have you tried both?

Or are you using a webbrowser with no WebAssembly support or WebAssembly disabled?

[–] radau@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 weeks ago

Soulseek via slskd on my NAS to fill in the missings from Lidarr works really well. Gluetun with a VPN and sharing everything as it grows