Domain is for sale.

> The artists get almost nothing from sales anyway and would like you to listen and enjoy regardless.

What you wrote may apply to huge artists like Beyonce or Taylor Swift (although even then they make a non-negligible amount of money off of sales since they do it in such huge volume). And it's true that artists make very little from _streaming_. But sales can be a large portion of income for smaller-than-Beyonce artists, especially if you buy physical media direct from them or digital media from places like Bandcamp.

Especially if you buy digital from places like Bandcamp, artists can actually get a significant portion of what you paid. I think when you break it down, buying digital from Bandcamp nets the artists just as much (if not a little more) than buying a CD off their merch table at a show.

Finally I assure you, most artists would prefer to get paid AND have you to listen and enjoy at the same time, instead of not getting paid and having you listen and enjoy.

Merch table !

It's a decent filesharing program, but one thing I find annoying about Soulseek is how the biggest users engage in actual piracy, that is, "paypal me if you want access to my collection". It's a really gross thing to do. Thankfully most users on the platform don't do it, just a few assholes.

I wish soulseek-qt just let you hide all locked content from showing in the UI, so I'm not worrying about what I'm missing out on by not interacting with rude bitter assholes who want payment or trade.

Anyways, your link is a 404, the correct domain name is https://slsknet.org

If the artist is unhappy with what they get in streaming, they usually withdraw their catalogue and offer their music via some alternative path (bandcamp, etc...) I don't think it's up to the users to decide how do artists want to be compensated.

A totally different story is: "I pirate because I can and because I want", but do not try to pass pirating as some sort of utopian "information wants to be free" BS