Why I Ditched Spotify, and How I Set Up My Own Music Stack | LeshiCodes
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    • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27·
      9 hours ago

      The absolute basics:

      1. Install qbittorrent
      2. Install a VPN and run it so that all your Internet traffic goes down it
      3. Open a Web browser and search for top torrent sites 2025. There are articles with lists of the big ones.
      4. Go to a torrent site and search for what you want.
      5. Download the .torrent file and open it in qbittorrent OR copy the magnet link and paste that into qbit torrent. Either will start your download.

      Always use the VPN when searching and downloading.

      There are lots of steps to make it more convenient - things like using a Virutal machine so the vpn and torrent do their thing while you do whatever else you want on your PC, or setting up a docker Servarr stack to make things more convenient, or setting up a Raspberry pi / other device as a servarr stack. But for the basics all you need is a torrent client, a VPN and a Web browser.

      All the extra advanced stuff is just quality of life, like being able to leave it downloading securely 24hours a day or organising your downloads better.

      • Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish
        23·
        4 hours ago

        Edit: I know that torrent clients are a well-established paradigm—and that people are resilient to change—which is probably why you downvoted me. But Debrid services are some serious game changers, so needless to say I’m disappointed in you for just blindly downvoting without even giving them a try. You have no idea what you’re missing out on. 😔

        If you’re going to pay money to pirate, you might as well skip the VPN and qbittorrent and just get a Debrid service instead. This gets you direct downloads to any torrent at gigabit speeds, without having to wait for seeds. Debrid takes the torrent client completely out of the picture.

        All you do is copy and paste the magnet link into the Debrid site, and then directly download the torrent from your browser. It’s cheaper and much faster than a VPN + torrent client. And safer too because your ISP doesn’t see you sharing any illegal content (seeding the files is how they get you) nor using a VPN, so you can still pirate in places where VPNs are illegal. They just see you downloading large files from the internet. And since you’re not distributing anything (seeding), you’re staying within the law in most jurisdictions.

        The threatening letters from my ISP stopped completely after I ditched qbittorrent and switched to Debrid. More people need to know about this. It’s so much better than putting up with torrent clients, dealing with DNS/IP leaks, and waiting for seeds. Just copy/paste and download.

    • bigb@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      10 hours ago

      Start out simple and stick with a basic BitTorrent client. Figure out where you want to download from and get a torrent client configured. I use an ISP that frowns upon piracy so here’s a quick overview:

      1. Look for public torrent sites. I’m out of this game so I don’t have any suggestions.
      2. Research private torrent trackers. I don’t think I can provide any help with this, but there are other corners of Lemmy who can.
      3. Find a VPN. Everyone has thoughts on this and Proton VPN is the one I’m currently using.
      4. Pick a torrent client. I’d recommend qBittorrent myself.
      5. Configure your VPN to include your BT traffic.

      If/when you want to try Lidarr, you’ll be much better off knowing the basics of BitTorrent because *arr software is confusing in its own regard. Lidarr is just a tool to organize your music library folders and also automatically queue downloads. It is not a requirement to enjoy downloading music.

      Usenet and soulseek are other alternatives.