Title says it. Is anyone still on the newsgroups? For reasons I need to amass a large collection of music in MP3 format, preferably full albums, and I’d like to do it somewhat quickly. Is there a better place to hunt before I buy news server access? I been on land for too many years.
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After struggling previously to get it set up, I have everything set up with Radarr, Sonarr, and SAB and I have yet to not find something. It’s sooooo good. BUT, you need to set it up specifically.
Usenet is all I use… highly recommend it.
Usenet is still very much a thing.
I use Eweka.nl (Usenet access) and NZBGeek (indexer). Works well.
DrunkenSlug is another great indexer, invite only and about $30 USD per year for their top offering.
I’ve been using them for a few years now. Smooth as butter.
How much does this setup cost?
According to my bank account:
Eweka runs about $16 USD a month (I also pay for the VPN), and NZBGeek runs about $12 USD a year.
9USD / mo for eweka.
I’ve only signed up in the last 24 hours. It seems incompletes are a thing, so that might mean I need another account with another provider as well.
nzbgeek cost 9 USD / year
Eweka is ~9 Euros a month:
Not sure where you got pricing for NZBGeek, it’s $12 a year:
I use it exclusively. I think it’s better than worrying about torrents. It almost feels obfuscated with the indexer.
I haven’t used usenet for 15 years or so. After nzbindex chucked it in.
What’s the situation with incompletes / DMCA’d releases?
Is one usenet subscription enough or do you have 2 monthly subscriptions? do you need a block account ?
I previously has a subscription last year (just one provider) and had sooo many incompletes. It was barely usable.
I recently set it all up properly and I haven’t had a single issue, even finding old movies with no issue. I have a provider, an indexer, and a cheap block account on a different backbone to fill the gaps. It works like absolute butter.
Sonarr, radarr, prowlarr, SAB and all that … do it right and it’s amazing.
I have not used torrents in years after discovering usenet. You can find the most obscure stuff that is impossible to find on torrents. Plus you are not dependent on seeders, nor do you have to seed yourself. Or the frustration that the torrent stops at 99% and you still can’t play. And to top it off the speed is amazing.
I do want to give a shout out to Kevin who developed the NZB360 app. It’s the best app for usenet and my most used app on my phone.
I’ve actually never used torrents. Had newsgroups access years ago, but I think I am going to try soulseek for now.
Usenet is still very much alive.
For music, I use Lidarr (along with the rest of the arr stack) and Headphones as an indexer.
It doesn’t have absolutely everything that I want but enough to make it worth the price.
I know Usenet is still alive and well for video, at least. Check out soulseek for music downloads if you want to try avoiding a subscription.
slsk would also be my recommendation for music, though I’m not sure I can recommend in good faith leeching a bunch of music all at once. Unless it’s a pretty even split amongst source users, and OP intends to share afterwards.
I predominantly use Usenet for procuring all my media, except for
- Switch ROMs, which I rely on torrents via NSWTL. I have 4 indexers and all of them give me “missing parts” error when I try to download Switch ROMs.
- Music, which I rely on Telegram bots. I am in the process of migrating my streaming library to Navidrome and I haven’t found a better workflow than to send a playlist link to the bot, and downloading the music and then tagging it using Picard.
could you share the telegram bot you use? used to use some but they got banned some time ago
Sure. It is called deezload2bot. Found it on fmhy.net.
Edited to remove direct link.
The missing parts sounds like a provider issue, not an indexer one. Do you have a backup block on a different backbone?
I don’t have one yet, but I do plan to get one as I infrequently get those errors with movies too.
I am using NewsHosting as my primary/sole provider (the bundled Privado VPN is what I bound qBitTorrent with), which is on Omicron.
Will look for a fallback on a different backbone. Though any inputs on this will be appreciated. :-)
BlockNews or Usenet.farm seem like they could be good fits for your set up. Since you can already get what you want, it may be worth it to wait until Black Friday sales.
I was under the impression Usenet was a BBS from the past, with designated port and server software, but people in the comments pay to use it as a P2P network?
How does it compare to soulseek?
Usenet was much more than a BBS from the past, in the sense that nearly everyone subscribed/participated in it. It was NNTP way back when, but tens of thousands of computers would sync all those messages at every node. By the late 80’s you even had binaries.
But then it all changed, and those nodes today are just corporate server farms and have really nothing to do with what Usenet was except name only. So yes, people pay to use a corporate node.
Usenet actually has a very similar design to Lemmy. In fact I sometimes wonder why Lemmy didn’t evolve the Usenet protocol rather than invent one from scratch.
It’s a big discussion forum organized into a tree-like topic structure, replicated across multiple servers, and any participant can contribute via any of the servers.
I haven’t tried soulseek, just learned about it from the replies to this thread. Last time I saw the newsgroups was almost 29 years ago. I’m definitely going to give soulseek a shot.
I’m a huge Soulseek user/advocate and if you’d like some tips, DM me and I’ll give you my username to chat.
Excellent! Thank you
What’s the benefit of usenet over torrents?
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Generally don’t need a VPN with usenet because according to isp providers it’s general downloaded content with encryption so they don’t see what you’re downloading
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speed depends on your provider, not seeder counts, meaning that it’s generally much more consistant speeds and can easily reach multi gigabit
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don’t need to worry about seeding at all, instead you have two caps to worry about that reset daily for indexes, api hits and download counts. Generally you get a couple thousand api hits for third party apps or your Starr apps and a few hundred downloads per day.
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older content is generally easier to find on usenet because there is no inactivity deletion due to lack of seeders like on private torrent trackers. The only limitation is your providers retention time generally in the thousands of days range
The one major downside of usenet over torrents is that you pay for access either monthly, yearly, or lifetime for both the provider and the indexer.
And you do need both because the providers give you the ability to download the files and the indexers host the files. So if you have just an indexer you can see the files but not download them or if you have just a provider you have the ability to download the files but can’t find any files to download.
Hope this helps!
This is great info, going to add Usenet toy system
Thanks for the summary. How are usenet providers not sued into oblivion for storing copyrighted data?
It’s like any file storage site. They are only a web server. Users upload things. And the owner of the server, if requested, may take it down. It’s a game of wackamole.
It’s not significant enough for anyone to care.
Thanks. Last time I used Usenet it was through easynews. Not sure if there are better options now. What providers and indexers do folks generally recommend?
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Uses encryption so you can’t be dinged by copyright trolls, high speed downloads (usually), easier automation and higher quality control.
Only note is that it isn’t free.
You get to sit through interviews, possibly get to pay for access and have to deal with gatekeepers.
Joking aside, theres some variety in the selection. In my experience, torrents have excellent selection of mainstream and well known artist, not so much with smaller, niche and local artists. Soulseeks fills that hole nicely. Some friends of mine who use usenet have reported that when you need to find that one EP from that one band that existed for 4 months in 1978, you have good chances of doing that there.
For me, its not worth the effort and trouble getting things set up and getting in to a server. Others will disagree and tell you its the best thing since recording C-cassette tapes for your friends.
for music theres also soulseek, or ripping from streaming platforms (deezer/tidal/qobuz)
I use soulseek for music full albums.
ever since i discovered soulseek has so many live radio recordings from the 70s and 80s i’ve been obsessed.
That seems to be the consensus. I’m gonna try it out tonight.
lots of people using Usenet.
I have 2 main servers on 2 different networks, plus some block accounts as backup and a couple of indexers.
But for music, especially if its anything unusual, rare, or otherwise difficult to locate elsewhere, get onto soulseek. I use N+ personally and have uploaded ~80TB this year so far and downloaded about 600Gb. I dont do torrents very often so SLSK is how I give back to the community.
Soulseek is an old school free file sharing P2P platform, like limewire, kazaa, winmx, ed2k etc. just like the good old days.
That sounds like a great place to start! Many thanks, matey!
Wow, that brings back memories
Loud, screeching memories
Local public libraries may have CDs you can borrow and rip. If you have a CD drive.
I don’t have a single thing with a CD drive anymore and work says we can’t use Bluetooth anymore so I need to load up a bunch of SD cards for my speaker. I’m gonna try this soulseek I see a lot of suggestions for.
I’ve been using Nicotine+ as my Soulseek client and it’s been working great for me.
I had an old mp3 player so I took that music and used it as my first set of shareable files. It took some time but I have been able to build up my library.
Once you’re on soulseek, look for joaquim_149. A lot of it is lossless audio but there’s also some mp3 files.
Will do, thanks!
