Soulseek
Soulseek is a
file-sharing application and
network used mostly to exchange music, although users are able to share a variety of files. It was created by
Nir Arbel, a former
Napster programmer. Like Napster, it relies on a central
server. Soulseek is free of
spyware and other malicious code. Soulseek is different from other file sharing programs as it allows users the option of downloading full folders instead of just single files.
The original Soulseek userbase was composed mostly of members of the
IDM Mailing List, and most of the music first found on Soulseek was underground
electronic music or
music created by the users themselves. After
Audiogalaxy was shut down, however, many former Audiogalaxy users migrated to Soulseek and brought copyrighted music owned by
record labels belonging to the
RIAA. Nevertheless, Soulseek remains a favorite of fans of
Avantgarde and underground
independent music, and a large portion of file-sharing on Soulseek is legal sharing of music that is distributed under a free license.
The userbase has grown rapidly since its beginnings, and there are now some 120,000 users on at any given time, with more than 1,000,000 total registered users in early 2004. Soulseek's server once had a problem with crashing due to
CPU overload, but this problem has since been rectified: a new server was set up in summer of 2004, and it is now rare for the server to be down for extended periods of time.
Soulseek hosts user-created chat rooms to discuss the various types of files shared over the network. Most rooms are dedicated to musical styles or geographical regions. For example, there are several
Japanese music rooms, a Thai music room, and a popular
underground music room that focuses on independent music. Some unique features include searching for files within a room (which is usually faster than a general network search) and setting a message in the room ticker. Users can also acquire "privileges" by donating money to the administrators, gaining in return the ability to download from other users faster by jumping to the top of their upload queue.
Many of the original Soulseek users are also music producers. Thus, it was only natural for them to take their community spirit one step further and form a record label.
Soulseek Records was formed in
2002.
Soulseek's users favor it because of the diverse mix of music which is shared on it, including an expansive collection of underground and independent artists, and live tracks. Additionally, long before
BitTorrent was developed, SoulSeek pioneered the downloading of files not only as discrete units, but as entire folders of files. This lends itself very well to downloading entire albums and collections of music. Its very popular chat feature also makes Soulseek a more personally connected community of music lovers, which is rather unique in the post-
Napster world; the largest file-sharing networks today (
Gnutella and
FastTrack) do not implement chat.
Though Soulseek excels at finding more obscure music that can't be easily found on more mainstream file-sharing networks, like any similar network, it also has its shortcomings. Since it does not support multisource downloading or "swarming" like other post-Napster clients, Soulseek must fetch a requested file from a single source (user). Additionally, sending large files can be difficult and will sometimes fail, though the transfer can usually be resumed. While users getting disconnected from one another during a download is extremely common in all similar P2P applications, it is more of an issue with Soulseek than other networks, due to the lack of swarming support. At least in theory, the addition of swarmed downloads would mitigate this problem by helping users find more sources for their files.
In Version 156c, the current version of the official Soulseek client as of June 2006, the "Abort" function does not properly cancel a download waiting in queue. To cancel such a download, use the "Delete" function.
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PySoulSeek - A
WxPython Soulseek client for
Linux*
Soulseex - A Soulseek client for
Mac OS X.
*
Nicotine - A
PyGTK2 Soulseek client for Linux and
Mac OS X based on
PySoulSeek*
Museek - A
C++/
Qt Soulseek client for Linux
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Soulseek Records - Soulseek record label
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Official Website*
Official Soulseek Discussion Board*
Soulseek Records*
Slyck's Guide to SoulSeek*
SolarSeek - Soulseek client for Mac OS X
*
soulseeX - Soulseek client for Mac OS X
