Soulseek

4.0 stars

"Good for those who can live with the flaws"

July 17, 2010  |   By bland_flabbis

Pros

No spyware, extremely wide selection of music available, general community feel to it.

Cons

There are design flaws which make it difficult to use. You need to get used to these before you'll get the most out of the program.

Summary

It's a bit like a throwback to the golden age of Napster and filesharing. You don't have to worry about downloading spyware or popups and there is a much wider selection of music to download than is available via any single torrent archive. As stated above, however, it's fairly difficult for new users and it can also be a little bit buggy.

Even though I've used this for several years and can download what I want from it, I still occasionally run into issues. For instance, when there are a queue of downloads and you want to abort/delete them, for some reason you often end up with the files still being downloaded in a new folder called "upload" - as if the user's computer you were attempting to download the files from hasn't been notified that you no longer want the files. Granted maybe I am doing something wrong here, but if you have a program that is genuinely difficult to learn how to use then you can't just throw it back on the user and assume everyone is an idiot. Ease of use is part of a well designed program and Soulseek has a few issues that you can only really get to grips with through trial and error.

With this stated, once you get to grips with it you will find it a very valuable filesharing option. I personally use torrents as a first option, but if (as is often the case) you can't find a torrent for the music you want then you can almost always find it on soulseek.

Reply to this review

Thank you for submitting your feedback!

Was this review helpful? (1) (0)