A niche band from Asia I loved as a teenager disbanded in the early 2000s. Due to legal reasons their work is in forever limbo, no Spotify, official YouTube etc. Best you can get is 2nd hand CDs on online marketplaces for a premium.

One guy was seeding a 4GB torrent over on PirateBay from 2008 with every song, music video, numerous interviews etc. Reasons like this is why pirating needs to stay alive. Legend made me want to seed it with him longterm. Now we’re 2 seeders strong.

Keep sailing pirates, and whenever possible please seed.

EDIT: For those asking the band is the Japanese band Malice Mizer. The torrent in question is https://thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=4158529 And I love seeing how a few of you guys know the band and getting hit by nostalgia. Enjoy

  • Varyag@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    53·
    3 months ago

    We all need to be our own archivists in this day and age. The internet isn’t forever, it’s a constantly burning Library of Alexandria. I’m glad you found your lost media again.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          5·
          3 months ago

          Society and everything as a whole.
          It would need government level of intervention but even that might not be enough.
          Just take a look at regular public libraries on how they fare. They look like they barely scrape by at times.

          • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

            You’re doing the “assume everyone online is American” thing. If I take a look at my public libraries here in Australia, they’re thriving. My local is in a new building about a decade old. It has a music studio that’s free to use for 12-25 year olds, it’s open 10am-8pm every day except Sunday. I’m also barely scratching the surface on what it offers, and what it’s sister libraries in nearby suburbs offer too.

            • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              2·
              3 months ago

              I am from Germany where libraries arent crippled to death.
              Thing most libraries outside of major city centers don’t get the funding.
              My local library doesnt have a manga section for example. The library in the next city at least has that but also requires a subscription or a single lending fee.

              • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                1·
                3 months ago

                Okay fair, my apologies. I’m not sure how you classify major city centres, but the library back in my hometown of 120k is thriving too. I actually have cards to multiple library systems, as they all have different online resources. I use my mum’s address for our hometown library card! 😂

        • tacticalsugar@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          5·
          3 months ago

          IA is not a sustainable project, and is built as a single point of failure. It has no transparency and no recovery plan if things go bad. Compare that to Anna’s Archive, a project that open sources all of their code and data so that things will continue running even if everyone involved disappears.

          Ask yourself: if IA’s data was silently modified, would anyone be able to tell?

  • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    34·
    3 months ago

    seeders who continue seeding weeks and month after the download is complete are basically mercy from overwatch

    • dmention7@lemm.eeEnglish
      14·
      3 months ago

      Is that not the normal? I just started sailing again recently, and I legit feel bad having to clear out an old torrent to make room for something new.

      • themurphy@lemmy.mlEnglish
        13·
        3 months ago

        I felt the same, but there’s just things that’s forever popular. I don’t mind not seeding, if there’s already 200+ doing it.

        But for all the niche things, and for personal favorites, I’ll seed for a loooong time.

  • Flatfire@lemmy.caEnglish
    31·
    3 months ago

    Can I introduce you to soulseek? I promise it’s going to serve way better than torrents for that kind of stuff.

    • ginza@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      20·
      3 months ago

      soulseek

      I have heard of it, but admittingly know very little about it and its strengths. After a quick search there’s a package for my Linux distro so I’ll install it when I got some time to deep dive it and get an understanding.

      Thank you tho I will have a good look later tonight. If there’s anything you think I should read/watch regarding Soulseek shoot it through. Nonetheless I’ll continue to seed regardless if I stick with Soulseek.

      • Flatfire@lemmy.caEnglish
        30·
        3 months ago

        Soulseek is a P2P file sharing system centered around music in particular. It’s pretty direct. Unlike a torrent where you’ll have multiple seeds for a single source, you’re connecting directly to other individuals for the content. It generally operates under the expectation that you’re also sharing something, and some users may opt not to allow downloads to people who do not also allow downloads from themselves. The downside to this system is you may need to wait for that person to come online before you can start a download, while with a torrent, other seeders can fill that gap.

        It’s survived as a pretty big platform for music hoarders to source hard to find material, but it’s so dead simple to use and it has a quick and reliable search. Nothing secretive about it, it’s basically just another P2P network that has more in common with Napster than the Pirate Bay

      • kirk781@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        20·
        3 months ago

        Use nicotine as the client instead. It’s arguably more user friendly and also stuffed with features. Most nix distros have it in their repos. You just need to share stuff on Soulseek(primarily music though some people share films as well).

        Soulseek is filled to the brim with music, especially flac versions of songs.

      • Ilandar@aussie.zoneEnglish
        11·
        3 months ago

        It’s pretty easy to use. The only challenge for newcomers is setting up port-forwarding, since some users won’t share their collection with people who have their ports blocked. You don’t have to open your ports or share your music collection, but it is leeching and considered a dick move by some.

        • ginza@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          13·
          3 months ago

          Alright so I already had a quick look, sooner than I intended. Got too excited.

          At a glance tho I love what I see. There’s an official nicotine+ package in the Pacman repository for Arch Linux so that’s a plus. I forwarded the port with no issue, I got a decent network setup so I got fixed internal IPs and could forwarded the port securely as possible.

          It also looks like it plays nicely with how I got my NAS setup and how I mount files internally to my PC. This could be a bit of a rabbit hole and a great learning experience for me. Thanks to everyone for the suggestion/tips.

          I’ll love to self-host this down the line on my server so I can better provide everyone with my files even when my usual PC isn’t on.

      • Emerald@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        After a quick search there’s a package for my Linux distro

        I recommend using the Nicotine Plus client. It’s more user friendly and open source

    • emhl@feddit.orgEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      I don’t really get, why people praise soulseek so much. It lacks the resilience of torrents. There is much cool stuff, but no quality control and structure. And the cool old stuff is artificially locked in order to keep it rare.

      • ginza@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Can you elaborate on what you mean by “artificially locked in order to keep it rare”?

        • emhl@feddit.orgEnglish
          6·
          3 months ago

          You can lock the files you’re sharing, so that other people can see them, but are unable to download. Unless they are specifically allowed to do so. Many people that do this only unlock the files if you have something good to trade (that’s also locked) or you pay them

      • Flatfire@lemmy.caEnglish
        11·
        3 months ago

        I don’t know about the latter half of your statement, but my main reason for its use is pretty simply just that there’s more music available, and it doesn’t take all the time it normally would to get invited to a good music tracker. If anything, specialized Torrent trackers that could offer the same volume of music are a much bigger pain go deal with.

    • ginza@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      You were bang on about Soulseek. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on it now and love it. I’m in the works of deploying an instance on a server for 24/7 uploading. Thank you for the recommendation.

      Edit: 24/7 server up and running. Pointed to my Jellyfin partition which has all my music, films, TV shows (and ebooks/manga since I set it up poorly back in the day)

  • billbennett@piefed.socialAfaraf
    28·
    3 months ago

    In that context, it’s not really piracy, it’s cultural preservation.

    Sure… I know lawyers say otherwise,

  • Zoidsberg@lemmy.caEnglish
    22·
    3 months ago

    The amount of niche old Canadian cartoons I’ve found thanks to dedicated pirates…

  • texasspacejoey@lemmy.caEnglish
    20·
    3 months ago

    I was looking for a show and i finally found it. There was 1 seeder and it took forEVER! I now have a ratio of 300. I will not stop sharing that until i have to.

  • ChonkaLoo@lemmy.zipEnglish
    20·
    3 months ago

    Yes me too. As bad as humanity seems sometimes, always good to remind yourself of the kindness from the likes of seeders in OP.

  • nasi_goreng@lemmy.zipEnglish
    16·
    3 months ago

    Upload them to YouTube or Bilibili. Japanese music fandom tends to archive everything that not available anymore on YouTube and rarely get taken down.

    That way, newer generation can discover them. Just like city pop.

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      OPs case might have even be easier to solve by using search terms in the respective language. Might not have been the same result and more manual work but maybe satisfactory results.

      • ginza@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        From what I understand the (Japanese) band official wrote the band name with the Latin alphabet. The band had a slight international presence in France if I’m not mistaken with their 2nd last album getting a limited CD release, so maybe a pirate site catering more to the Japanese or French crowd might have yielded better results in hindsight.

  • lichtmetzger@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    13·
    3 months ago

    Similar experience: One guy was seeding all of the old uncensored episodes of The Three Investigators and I’m so grateful for that. It’s pretty popular here in Germany, but despite that, no one seems to share it. There are episodes on Spotify, but they are censored and some of the music has been replaced with a modern rendition.

  • gwilikers@lemmy.mlEnglish
    13·
    3 months ago

    Oooh, what’s the band called?

    Edit: Malice Mizer. OP answered below.

  • fibojoly@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    10·
    3 months ago

    Meanwhile my torrent of Thee Michelle Gun Elephant is stuck at 31.9% because that’s all that’s available.

    Story of my life with torrents, really. I just want the old and obscure, the stuff you can’t find anymore. But it always seems to be all about the latest popular shit, sadly.

    • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      Have you tried private trackers?

      Edit: or soulseek?

      I’m searching on the Seeker app but use Nicotine+ on desktop.

      (this is like oldschool p2p, those are live clients and searching at other times may reveal more or less)

      • weirdo_from_space@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        61·
        3 months ago

        Private trackers are not worth it at all. Getting into main stuff is way too hard and open signups are pure luck. Even people who used top tier private trackers for over a decade now openly admit they wouldn’t bother with it if they were starting from scratch today.

        • Evoliddaw@lemmy.caEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          Quite the contrary, I’d redo the tests for RED or OPS in a heartbeat. The fact that require potential invitees to put forth a bit of effort to join generally weeds out the people who aren’t going to put in the effort to maintain their account or ratio.

          Spent maybe 1 hour reading the training material for both sites. Passed OPS first time, RED second. Maintaining a good standing on either will generally be enough to get you into anything else.

          I was a denier for a few years too until I just sucked it up and made an attempt. Couldn’t pay me enough to switch back now.

        • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          I’ve been on Torrentday for 12 years. It’s been worth my time, in fact I get most of my content there. These days I have it set up with the *arrs, it’s the main source of torrents, alongside usenet as well. Guess it all depends. General trackers can be great.

      • fibojoly@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        I used to be on Demonoid and some other JAV trackers but they shut down and I’m too lazy to bother with waiting to join another. Never really was into music enough to track (hah!) a private tracker and honestly I think it’s not in the spirit of torrents. But I appreciate the recommendations nonetheless :)

        • can@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          Soulseek is freely open and barely even requires a login if you ever want to look.