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I had an account day 1 when Spotify launched in my country. It was such a big deal to me, a person who spent their teens and 20s hoarding music. One service and it was most of the music I wanted. I could sideload my own music and shuffle it all together.

I miss that little app store on the desktop client. You could join shared radio stations and vote on the next track while people wrote to each other in a chat.

Yikes that's a major issue that I coincidentally bypassed by not using Lidarr for the past few months myself.

Start out simple and stick with a basic BitTorrent client. Figure out where you want to download from and get a torrent client configured. I use an ISP that frowns upon piracy so here's a quick overview:

1. Look for public torrent sites. I'm out of this game so I don't have any suggestions.
2. Research private torrent trackers. I don't think I can provide any help with this, but there are other corners of Lemmy who can.
3. Find a VPN. Everyone has thoughts on this and Proton VPN is the one I'm currently using.
4. Pick a torrent client. I'd recommend qBittorrent myself.
5. Configure your VPN to include your BT traffic.

If/when you want to try Lidarr, you'll be much better off knowing the basics of BitTorrent because *arr software is confusing in its own regard. Lidarr is just a tool to organize your music library folders and also automatically queue downloads. It is not a requirement to enjoy downloading music.

Usenet and soulseek are other alternatives.

You'll have to be more specific. :) I think it works well for organizing a music library unless there are issues with this feature that I'm unaware of. Using it to queue downloads was painful for me, so I resort to less automated ways to acquire music files.

Simply put, the *arr software concept works well for downloading movies and TV shows (Radarr and Sonarr). Music just seems to be a little more difficult and I have lots of issues with Lidarr finding music out on Usenet and trackers. I hope that's user error on my part.

Oh no, not bitter beer face!

Listenbrainz is an open-source alternative to Last.fm: https://listenbrainz.org/

But I've used Last.fm for 20 years so I definitely recommend it.

Start with your city and parish, do either of them run a household hazardous waste recycling center? These places will take chemicals, batteries and other dangerous materials so they don't end up in the landfill. Sherveport is hosting a dropoff day on July 26: https://www.shreveportgreen.org/community-garden-2-2-1

Also look and see if any local recycling centers will take them. We also have electronic/e-waste collectors in my area.

I've kept a blanket for 20 years. I remember when I bought it at a department store with my mom before I went off to college. It's the perfect thickness and texture for me to sleep with. The nostalgia is an added bonus for a really comfortable blanket.

Smarttube on Android TV OS

All *arr apps should use root folders to organize media. If I understand the question, here's the hypothetical situation:

1. Create a root folder for *Arr App.
2. Download media until drive is full.
3. Create a new root folder that points to different drive.
4. Configure *Arr App to move new downloads to new root folder created in step 3.

You should be able to have multiple root folders, but I've only checked in So are. One problem you'll run into is that you can't break up music artists or TV show series across root folders.

You might want to consider something like OpenMediaVault or Unraid to manage your storage. Either platform (or others) allow you to add drives as needed. I don't use either so I'm just passing that along as a consideration.

Not sure if my setup is unique or wrong but here's what I use:

1. I registered a domain with Name cheap and created subdomains for the tools I wanted to access (i.e. jellyfin.domain.tld, sonarr.domain.tld)
2. A DDNS client on my OpenWRT router updates the IP address for those subdomains. Traffic for each subdomain is pointed at my server.
3. Nginx Reverse Proxy runs on my server. This provides HTTPS certificates and is pretty straightforward.

I also use Tailscale for remote access and I'm not sure that my friends and family are ready for that. (Admittedly, I'm still on Plex.) Registering your own domain and using a DDNS service and reverse proxy will give your users an easier experience than Tailscale. I can give an easy-to-remember URL to folks rather than a new VPN platform to learn.

If security is more important, Tailscale is the best option for remote connections.

Why don't we need this for Plex? Because Plex has all of the above steps baked into its service.

It drives me crazy when Reagan is treated as a god :)