Pirating My Own Music?

I want to start releasing my own music and have no interest in the corporate streaming platforms. I have only a basic conceptual understanding of torrenting but it seems to me like a nice way of sharing my music with people directly.

What do I need to do and consider in order to make a music release freely available in this way?

Currently my knowledge and experience is limited to using an application on my computer to search for and download files from others but I'm willing to learn.

Any advice or signposting much appreciated :)

62 comments

https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/
Read that for a start. And maybe consider sharing your work under a nice license. You can also check out platforms like Jamendo, Bandcamp, the Internet Archive... And as far as I understand archive.org will even handle generating some torrents for you.
- +1 for Jamendo and CC licenses
  
  https://artists.jamendo.com/introduction-en/
  Not big on them saying they can take from people who may be your fans for you lol
  They'll "hunt" em down for me! Love to know:)
  
  What are your thoughts on Jamendo from an artists point of view?
- Thanks for those links :)
  Yes, I've been looking at licensing today too. I think I will use the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. If I'm correct this would allow free sharing between listeners and adaptation for creative use with attribution, while preserving my ability to charge for commercial use.
  
  These restrictions are meant to forbid what other people can do. So you yourself can do anything with your content, no matter what's in the license. It just means other people can't use it in their projects if relates to making money. But I think something like CC BY-SA or BY-NC-SA is a solid choice. I'm always for freedom, so I'd drop the NC and allow my audience to do practically whatever they want... But it's your creation and your choice.

If you have access to certain music-focused private torrent trackers, many will do spotlight articles on independent or smaller artists who are also members.
This kind of sharing is often welcomed and a valued thing, so could even be a way in to some of those communities.
Redacted does this, and I've been introduced to some really good music this way.
Alternately, as others have noted, Bandcamp is a good way to offer as well. If you go this route, even with setting the music as free, you might make some small money... I've often tipped a bit via the "Pay what you want" pricing tier.
- Thanks :) What are private torrent trackers? And what is Redacted?
  Yes, I may use Bandcamp too or perhaps Faircamp, which you can host yourself. Bandwagon and Funkwhale appeal to me a lot as well, for the federation.
  
  Private trackers are closed communities for sharing torrents. Often you can either interview to get access, or occasionally one with have open sign up for access. These usually have strict requirements to maintain a reasonable ratio of seeding for your downloads to prevent greedy users from ruining performance of sharing.
  Redacted is one of these communities, based strictly around music and maintaining quality, refusing to allow low quality encoding of the data. It is harder to get into the community, as well as very strict seeding requirements to maintain.
  Information about who they are and how to apply for access can all be found at https://interviewfor.red/

Funkwhale is a federated music sharing platform. In addition to some of the good suggestions here, maybe add that into your mix.
- Yes, I will definitely be looking into Funkwhale. Bandwagon looks really exciting too.

Put it on your website and it will end up on a torrent site if anyone wants it.
- I'll do that too but I would like to get actively involved in a music release pipeline that I think could be really positive. I guess I want to give to the listener as directly as possible.
  
  OCRemix.Org already does this with their music, so its possible.

A lot of people use bandcamp.. probably the least corporate of the online platforms
- Isn't Bandcamp owned by Epic Games?
  
  Not anymore. They are owned by Songtradr now
  
  No idea. But they seem to be creator friendly.

On the technical side of things, in order to create a torrent, you can just use something like QBittorrent to do the job. I've never uploaded something to a public tracker, but private trackers just have you fill out a form and upload the torrent file. Be sure to seed it, obviously.
- Thanks 👍 I already use QBittorrent for downloading so I will look at that. What does it mean to 'seed' a file? And would the QBittorrent application need to be open constantly for this to work? If so, I may see about installing it on a VPS instead.
  
  Seeding is a good way to be a good pirate. Some sites show your seed to leech ratio. As a rule of thumb, I usually try to seed double what I leech, but if I find something niche without a lot of seeders I try to maintain until the seeder rate becomes healthy. Simply put, you just don't delete or stop the torrent after its completely downloaded and don't quit your client. Just let it keep going.
  You may find that your internet speed drops when seeding. In that case, most clients have a way to cap your upload speeds. Most modern internet speeds can keep up though; it used to be required way back when dial-up and DSL was more prevalent. You know, the good old times of spending three days downloading a movie to find out that it was scat porn.
  
  The torrent protocol works by having uploader (seeders) users sharing their files to downloader users (leechers). Users are topically both seeders and leechers.
  With that in mind, to seed a file means to share it with others. And yes, you need your torrent client open for that. QBitTorrent is amazing and doesn't have much overhead in your system, plus you can limit your upload speed and net upload. Some console-based torrent apps are even lighter. No VPS required unless you have specific constraints.

Nothing to worry about unless you've signed a contract with someone. Normally when you sign with a record label you're selling them the rights to your music, so they could sue you if you try to give it away or sell it without them being involved. Record labels are known to be pretty predatory...

I release music. I use a low cost platform for distribution. There are free ones. I understand your position because I feel similarly.
I never expect to make money or get recognized, but I think my music is good enough to share. To do that, you need a distributor and to be on the major platforms.
Look into Soundrop. You can also put your stuff on bandcamp for free, but at least get it out as widely as you can.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3Pdxd1oiWnNZK8NktgL7V3
- Is Soundrop the distributor you use? I'll have a look.
  
  Yes. It's like $9 for a perpetual release. I used Amuse.io before, but they suck you in and hit you with fake fees after you're on their service.

Been telling ppl they have a better chance of eventually blowing up on Funkwhale and then making money off their fans in the future than they do organically any other way now. Im delusional about the fediverse tho.
- I don't think you're wrong. I think the big corporate music streaming platforms are basically a low key scam. They are effectively pointless (beyond free file hosting), unless you are one of the 0.001% of artists that are heavily promoted on them and are an insult to musicians everywhere. More musicians need to reject the proposition of being one of the bottom stones that holds up their pyramid. I would rather my music was unknown on independent sites than unknown on theirs, where it will only add value to an exploitative business model and help to further entrench it.

Maybe bandcamp and youtube?
- I might use Bandcamp but I don't want my music to be on youtube or spotify.
  
  With the utmost respect - if your music reaches enough people its going to end up on YouTube like it or not, especially under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0. But I respect not wanting to endorse the platform yourself.

On top of what everyone else has said you could always use soulseek as a way to get it out there
- Thanks. How does Soulseek work?
  
  It’s peer-to-peer like torrents, but on its own network. Use can share anything but it’s primarily used for music. You set a folder to share from and if someone looks up a file you have, they can download it from you.

Leave a text file along with your music including a donation link and thanking people for listening.
I've heard more than a handful of artists getting some money that way after putting their own albums up on torrent/file-share sites.
- If you're releasing in a format that supports tagging, there's usually either a comment field or custom field that you could put this into in as well.
- Will do 👌 I'm not familiar with websites to upload to - the only experience I have so far is searching for files within Qbittorrent, which I believe is using search plugins... How can I find these sites? Thanks

Did you release it through a publisher of some kind? If not, it wouldn't matter because you have the full rights and the onus would be on you to take legal action in anyone that downloaded it.
- Nothing is released yet. I would be happy for people to download my music to listen to without restrictions, which is why I'm looking into making it available as torrents.

You need https://wavlake.com/
- Thanks for the link - been down a rabbit hole for the last hour or so! Really interesting. I've never really dealt with crypto but direct transactions look awesome. The fact that it uses open protocols is great too.
  Have you released anything on it or are you a listener?
  
  It's built around bitcoin and does not have any shitcoinery.
  I'm a listener but value for value is definitely the future. I have myself paid people for thier music & know lots of artists that have made more than they did on centralized platforms.
  You can find way more information on nostr too: https://primal.net/wavlake

How much do you know about piracy? VPN, torrenting client, etc..
- If they hold the copyright to their own music (basically, if they're not signed to a label), they can distribute it wherever they want.
- I understand the concept of sharing 'peer-to peer', how a VPN works (and I use one) and I regularly use Qbittorrent to download files. I understand that in this context piracy is contravening an intellectual property license. That's it! I don't know how to distribute files using the technology.

im just posting on my personal instance at thejoyo.com
there's a popular electronic producer that had their shit stolen by Apple back when iTunes was a thing and they published their music for torrenting and found some support from that.
the flashbulb
- I fucking love the flashbulb. Way underrated. Been my favorite artist for almost 20 years now.
  
  yah, i only recently got into synths and watched some of benn Jordan's yt videos and when he mentioned his music my jaw dropped. ive been listening to them for decades as the flashbub.
- What is your instance running? I can see that it's federated but I don't recognise it. Thanks :)
  
  goto social, it implements a mastodon api but is a lot more light weight and focused on smaller user base.
  i switched to it right around the pleroma akkoma split and it's been great since. tho now i have that annoying trusted proxy message that i thought i fixed but caddy wont fwd.
  https://gotosocial.org/

62 comments