Im a little late and you already received good answers. I only want to add that you can add an extra value to your downloads if you sort them in a way you like. Not only a big folder with artist/album. You can go by genre, by year, by label, by country, by formart by mood, favourites, etc.

Personally I don’t think you are an arsehole for not sharing anything but within my music niche there is definitely a lot of cunt that lock all their shares and are generally very hostile in regards to their shit.

I share an absolute shit ton of stuff, a lot of brand new stuff and I always have hundreds if not thousands of tracks uploaded each week but my niche genre is absolutely full of elitist, gate keeping pricks.

Aside from locking all their files trying to get bandcamp vouchers and shit in exchange for their files when some people want some stuff from me have had a fair few conversations with people saying “yeh you can have access to my files but you have to promise not to publicly share them”. I always agree that I won’t knowing full well I am going to straight away.

I have also received a few messages when these same people realise I’m sharing “their” music calling me all kinds of things but fuck those cunts!

Piracy is about sharing stuff and making it available to everyone as far as I’m concerned and pissing these elitist, file locking cunts off just makes me so fucking happy.

The concept of locking files goes against what piracy is all about in my opinion and when I do find these file locking cunts when I am searching for stuff myself I will often just unshare all my files from them because they don’t deserve all my new releases I share if they are going to act like that.

Long story short, fuck “etiquette”, share everything!

And if you are a “dubstep head” sharing locked files on there reading, fuck you, you are a piece of shit.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

The usual thing is to share something. If it’s super common most people don’t care, if it’s rare, sharing it again to increase uptime is good. Sharing your own stuff is even better to widen what’s available.

You will run into people who will auto ban you if you aren’t sharing something. I think that’s a bit extreme and dumb myself but eh, it is what it is.

I basically just have my actual media directories (films, TV, music, books) setup to share, anything I download will inevitably end up there; if someone wants something, great, if not, no worries.

I don’t think theres any harm in “oversharing” if that’s what you’re concerned of.

I always share things I’ve downloaded. It’s not mine to begin with, so no need to hide it.

Easiest way is to just point your share directory setting to your main library. Never need to think about it again.

As with anything you pirate, please share.

I’d say so. If you didn’t download anything yet, what would you have to share anyway?

I think that depends on you. Do you have enough bandwidth to share? Does your network even allow it? If the answer to both is yes, are you comfortable lending your bandwidth so strangers can download what you have to offer?

Only the most traumatized Soulseek veterans will give you speeches about “etiquette that you must follow to the letter”. Content scarcity isn’t a problem nowadays, at least in my experience. If you want to contribute, it costs you nothing to select the same folder for downloading and sharing, that’s what I do, but to each their own!

I know that for most people, “the more people sharing, the better to increase availability,” but not everyone can, for whatever reason. What you’ll probably want to do is share a few songs anyway, even if you don’t plan to do it on a large scale. Some users restrict their downloads if you don’t share files. Others restrict you if you don’t share X number of files.

Following because I also want to know the answer