EPOCH6

I just don't understand bots anymore, this is some next level ****. It's like companies have stopped using bots and have started hiring regular folks to join forums and talk about a particular list of services. It's like 5 new members all join at once and then spontaneously interact politely and directly with each other in single threads, like they're posting from a script. Some crazy cyberpunk ****.

Anyway, this is actually a decent topic, so why not. You win this time, future.
Bandcamp for sure.

Bandcamp has been a game changer for small time artists. Easy to use, very customizable, the site layout is fantastic, they allow merch and hardcopy sales, they demand quality audio uploads so they can be distributed in multiple formats, they allow artists to easily promote other artists, they allow track previews, payment is easy, they'll automatically inform you when artists you like release new material, and the site works great on mobile devices.
I use SoulSeek for hard to find music these days.

I've been pirating music for 13 years, since the early LimeWire releases. I've jumped across peer-to-peer services from LimeWire to FrostWire, BearShare, Napster, Morpheus, and eventually BitTorrent services and search engines like uTorrent and Vuze paired with The Pirate Bay, Kickass.to, Demonoid, warez.bb, what.cd etc as well as music blogs and cyberlockers like Rapidshare, MediaFire, ZippyShare, HotFile, 4Shared, Megaupload, MEGA, and the countless others that have risen and fallen over the last half decade.

SoulSeek has consistently been the best for me. It allows you to share your entire music library without uploading it until somebody polls you for a particular download. Every dedicated users music library is wide open for exploring and the application has a built in chat feature that lets you discuss the music you're seeking out with the other collectors. Besides maybe what.cd, SoulSeek seems to be the most dedicated and passionate community of music collectors I've ever seen. It's not uncommon for people to strike up a conversation with you as they're downloading something from your collection, asking for similar recommendations, asking what you think about the album, telling you about a time they saw the band live etc. The search filtering is advanced and very useful, you can make a wishlist so that SoulSeek notifies you as soon as an album has become available, the existing library of music on SoulSeek is absolutely incredible, and you can upload dozens of album to other users a day without even noticing any strain on your connection speed.

Fantastic software, fantastic community, genuine collectors sharing with genuine collectors.
None, besides maybe YouTube every once in a while.
Nope.

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