I ran into issues with sometimes not being able to view some other users files when I requested a list of what they were sharing, but I don’t really know the ins and outs of how it all works, I just know that plenty of people downloaded a lot of stuff from me so it must have been working for some people :)
I have been using soulseek for the last 6 months without port forwarding and plenty of people have downloaded a lot of stuff from me, however I have just switched to airvpn as well and can confirm now have port forwarding so Im hoping more people can access my files!
I absolutely do where I can but when a lot of stuff gets released within the scene I am into on a dead inferior format (vinyl) exclusively then I am absolutely going to pirate that shit if I can.
I use Asgard along with real debrid which will populate your search results with torrents as well as other results and has been working well for me for a while now.
In a similar vein people on soulseek who have all their files locked unless you trade with them, particularly the ones who want gift vouchers and shit like that I feel goes against the community spirit of piracy as a whole. If I get hold of something rare or that has broken street date i’m excited to share it with others who may no be able to get it for whatever reason.
Really pisses me off scrolling through my search results seeing loads of lock symbols with user info listing demands that must be met for you to be oh so privaledged enough to receive a right to download from them. It goes against what I grew up knowing piracy to be, I’m guessing I am a similar age to you though.
And to all you soulseek users listing locked files with lists of demands to access them. Fuck you.
I have found most of the things I want through a combination of piratebay and 1337x for torrents, soulseek, librevox for old stuff and a library app. I have then mirrored what I have got via torrents up on to soulseek.
I have recently been using the scribd free trial so might be worth checking there, they do a 30 day free trial then when you go to cancel the sub they will offer an additional 30 days free too.