Wednesday, October 2, 2019

A Soulseek Option

Some people have been complaining about difficulties in downloading the Zippyshare files. I know Zippyshare has issues, especially with pop-up ads as well as not working in some countries, especially Britain. I keep telling people to try downloading using different browsers or computers, installing ad blocker plug-ins, and using a VPN (virtual private network). I still recommend that. Having ad blockers and using a VPN is just smart for using the Internet in general, to reduce your hassles and protect your privacy.

I was hoping the Zippyshare problem in Britain (which started after I began this blog) would be resolved eventually, but it's been many months and I haven't heard of any change. Plus, some people outside of Britain are having trouble too. I still don't want to move on from Zippyshare, because it's easy and free for me to use, and most people are satisfied with it. But I now have an alternate way to access some of the music I've been posting here through the file sharing program Soulseek.

If you're not familiar with Soulseek, it's awesome. It's a key way I'm able to find some of the really rare music I post here. Basically, it's a file sharing program, much like how Napster used to be, but even better. It's free and easy to use. Here's the Wikipedia entry on it if you want to know more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soulseek

I have an account there, under the name "albumsthatshouldexist," and lately I've been posting a lot of the music I share here over there. So if you're having trouble with Zippyshare or just prefer the ease of use of Soulseek, you have a different option. I'm not posting my entire music collection there yet for a variety of reasons. One is that I'm a precise kind of person, and I don't want to offer something until I have it prepared with cover art and a write up and so forth. But if I've posted something here, there's no reason I couldn't make available over there too.

So far, I've shared on Soulseek all the albums I've created and posted here so far for the following artists:

Aretha Franklin
Beck
Belle & Sebastian
Bonnie Raitt
Carole King
CSNY
Derek & the Dominos
Dusty Springfield
Elliott Smith
Indigo Girls
Jackie DeShannon
Kinks
Kirsty MacColl
Larkin Poe
Led Zeppelin
Nick Drake
Nikki Bluhm & the Gramblers
Norah Jones
Paul Weller
Petra Haden
Ray Davies
Rockpile
Van Morrison

The reason I haven't shared more so far is that I want to do some minor tidying up before I share a folder. As just one example, every time I create album art, I made a .PSD file which I put in that album folder. But .PSD files are very big files that only open in Photoshop, and most people don't want them, or even know what to do with them. So I have to move those out and put them somewhere else. And there are a number of other things I want to do first like that.

That said, I'm working on sharing more. If you want any particular album I've posted here and you can't get it through Zippyshare, leave me a note and I'll share it through Soulseek.

By the way, for each album I post here, I keep a .JPG file of the cover art, if I've made one or otherwise have one. But the blog comments I post here are just here, so far. If someone wants to go through the bother of making text files out of each one and sending them to me, I could add those to the folders too, so people could get them through Soulseek as well. But that's another hassle I don't want to do. I recall at least one person left a comment that they saved the blog comments for each album they downloaded, so maybe that person could help out with that.

7 comments:

  1. You are a generous and kind soul. Soulseek is a great place to get hard to find titles, though I love Zippyshare (used with a VPN and ad-blockers and pop-up blockers etc.) I am the guy who has saved all of your album comments as text files. I just don't know how to send them to you directly...

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    1. Oh cool. Thanks. Regarding the text files, you could just zip them up and upload them via Zippyshare. Tell me the URL here, and then you can delete the link if you want (or let it die eventually). If you haven't used Zippyshare, it's super easy to use, and free. You don't even need an account. If you could do something like that, I'd really appreciate it.

      Did you save the files using some naming convention I could understand? And are you using the latest versions. There are many albums where I've gone back and made changes, usually when I found a song or two to add. I've done this though so one can always find them if you search for "EDIT:" using the search engine with this blog.

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    2. Oooh, here's where we hit a major snag. I named them, like many other websites do, (ie Albums That Never Were) as Notes. This works fine as long as they are contained in the appropriate artist/album folder. Moving them or combining them outside of this structure leads to chaos. Using a Zippy upload is a great idea if we can figure this situation out. Hmmm.

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  2. Plus, the issue of finding them in the first place. Doing a search would lead to thousands of text files titled Notes. I could break the search down by artist, but still, you get the idea. (I'm dealing with more than a few titles here.) I'm open to suggestions. Almost easier on your end as (I assume) you would have this site's files separate and could sort and access them more readily.

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    1. Hmmm. Bummer. I don't know of any easy way to do this. I just type my notes in this blog off the top of my head as I'm going through the process of posting an album. They're not written or saved anywhere else. I have a way of backing up the whole blog (and I just did that, thanks to thinking of it right now), but all that does is create an XML file that looks pretty messy if I open it up in Dreamweaver. So I don't have any good idea. :(

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  3. Opera seems to accept zippy in the uk, i have the opera vpn on too :)

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    1. Thanks for the tip. Though I'll bet it's because you're using VPN. Is that a free plug-in for Opera?

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