5 ms·

Interesting. I want to seamlessly distribute my music through bittorrent, but since I have a small fan base (and thus, a very small potential seeding pool), I

by jMyles 3y ago

Interesting. I want to seamlessly distribute my music through bittorrent, but since I have a small fan base (and thus, a very small potential seeding pool), I found it difficult to connect all the moving parts. I'll give Bitmagnet a try for an Indexer. I did find that IPFS, with a pinning service (I won't shill the one I used in particular), was a bit easier and just worked for everyone who tried to use it. But I'd like to get my bittorrent presence up to the "just works" level also.

8organicbits 3y ago
Have you considered setting up a web seed? https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2021/06/how-to-add-web-seeds-to-torrent-download.html?m=1 https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2021/06/how-to-add-web-seeds-to-t...
- jMyles 3y ago
  No I hadn't! This seems exciting. Have you done it successfully?
  - evulhotdog 3y ago
    It is pretty common for open source distribution of operating systems, and it works well.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
KoftaBob 3y ago
Well for your use case of distributing your own music, Bitmagnet wouldn't be necessary. What a DHT crawler like Bitmagnet does is the following: 1. Take a few initial "bootstrap" torrents and ping them to see which IP addresses are seeding that file 2. Ping those IP addresses and ask what other files/torrents they're seeding 3. Ping those torrents to see which IP addresses are seeding that torrent Rinse repeat. So to distribute your music to fans, you'd just want to put magnet links to your music on your site.
- gkbrk 3y ago
  You don't need to ping anyone to crawl the DHT. You can passively wait and you'll get DHT queries in the form of "I'm looking for people seeding XYZ. Do you have a list?". You can just save those somewhere and you'll accumulate a list of active and new torrents. Writing a DHT crawler is super fun, I suggest everyone to get a cheap VM and write/run one.
  - pluto_modadic 3y ago
    that'd be the slow mode, though
  - jMyles 3y ago
    It's kinda like the owl with the tootsie pop: How many cups of coffee does it take to internalize hamming distance? :-)
- the8472 3y ago
  That's not correct. Torrent swarms and the DHT are separate. Each torrent basically forms its own small network of TCP connections to exchange data specific to that one torrent. While the DHT is a network shared by all clients that speak the protocol and it's carried over short-lived UDP query-response exchanges.
  - pessimizer 3y ago
    You have to be participating in a torrent swarm in order to bootstrap yourself into DHT at all. Bittorrent's DHT is not a network independent of torrent swarms. You need the address of a peer who is already part of the network in order to join it, and you have to get a list those addresses from somewhere.
    - the8472 3y ago
      > You have to be participating in a torrent swarm in order to bootstrap yourself into DHT at all. This is not correct. > Bittorrent's DHT is not a network independent of torrent swarms. This is also wrong. People have used the DHT for non-torrent-related purposes. > You need the address of a peer who is already part of the network in order to join it, and you have to get a list those addresses from somewhere. And nothing dictates that that has to be obtained via the bittorrent peer protocol. https://stackoverflow.com/a/11089702/1362755 https://stackoverflow.com/a/11089702/1362755
johnchristopher 3y ago
Won't you run into the problem that you will have to generate torrents every time you update your music collection ?
rakoo 3y ago
You don't need an indexer for that. All you need is a static list with all your music, and people can click on links to download your music. Give them qbittorrent and it'll be running smoothly.
- jMyles 3y ago
  Sure, but I'd like to go beyond magnet links and make it properly decentralized, with the discovery happening in the DHT and torrent swarm.
  - anacrolix 3y ago
    Maybe check out how it's done here: https://archive.org/details/the-fanimatrix-div-x-5.1-hq https://archive.org/details/the-fanimatrix-div-x-5.1-hq. They don't seem to provide magnet links, but basically you create a torrent from your music. Host it somewhere (Cloudflare R2 would be good for free egress) in the right structure. Add the webseed endpoint to your torrent file and create a magnet link. Put all this stuff on a website in the download section. Let your users download it however they want.
  - rakoo 3y ago
    There is no point in running your own indexer if it's only for your own music though. If your goal is to run a more "communal" indexing point, it also makes sense to build it cooperatively with other artists, listing only content you all care about and want to distribute (rather than doing a filtering after the fact with a general indexer) I like your idea of giving its name back to a technology that just works better, and I think it pairs really well with giving back a humane touch to how we use the internet, computers, and putting people back at the center rather than thinking about tools first !
CharlesW 3y ago
> I want to seamlessly distribute my music through bittorrent, but since I have a small fan base (and thus, a very small potential seeding pool), I found it difficult to connect all the moving parts. Out of curiosity, why not just distribute via R2 or similar, or archive.org if you don't need AuthN/AuthZ? What's the complexity (to you and listeners) of BitTorrent buy you?
- jMyles 3y ago
  Well, I do distribute via some centralized platforms (including some odious ones like Spotify). But I'd like to put forward a practice that demonstrates that the tools that have been smeared as anti-artist (chiefly but not only bittorrent) are actually compelling tools for independent distribution.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    Thanks, I love it!
felixg3 3y ago
Post your magnet link and I’ll host it on my Amsterdam-based server
throwing_away 3y ago
You can also encourage people to host your content with IPFS, removing the need for a pinning service if there's enough of them.
factormeta 3y ago
Try https://webtorrent.io https://webtorrent.io

by jMyles 3y ago

8organicbits 3y ago

Have you considered setting up a web seed? https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2021/06/how-to-add-web-seeds-to-torrent-download.html?m=1 https://www.ubuntubuzz.com/2021/06/how-to-add-web-seeds-to-t...

jMyles 3y ago
No I hadn't! This seems exciting. Have you done it successfully?
- evulhotdog 3y ago
  It is pretty common for open source distribution of operating systems, and it works well.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

KoftaBob 3y ago

Well for your use case of distributing your own music, Bitmagnet wouldn't be necessary. What a DHT crawler like Bitmagnet does is the following: 1. Take a few initial "bootstrap" torrents and ping them to see which IP addresses are seeding that file 2. Ping those IP addresses and ask what other files/torrents they're seeding 3. Ping those torrents to see which IP addresses are seeding that torrent Rinse repeat. So to distribute your music to fans, you'd just want to put magnet links to your music on your site.

gkbrk 3y ago
You don't need to ping anyone to crawl the DHT. You can passively wait and you'll get DHT queries in the form of "I'm looking for people seeding XYZ. Do you have a list?". You can just save those somewhere and you'll accumulate a list of active and new torrents. Writing a DHT crawler is super fun, I suggest everyone to get a cheap VM and write/run one.
- pluto_modadic 3y ago
  that'd be the slow mode, though
- jMyles 3y ago
  It's kinda like the owl with the tootsie pop: How many cups of coffee does it take to internalize hamming distance? :-)
the8472 3y ago
That's not correct. Torrent swarms and the DHT are separate. Each torrent basically forms its own small network of TCP connections to exchange data specific to that one torrent. While the DHT is a network shared by all clients that speak the protocol and it's carried over short-lived UDP query-response exchanges.
- pessimizer 3y ago
  You have to be participating in a torrent swarm in order to bootstrap yourself into DHT at all. Bittorrent's DHT is not a network independent of torrent swarms. You need the address of a peer who is already part of the network in order to join it, and you have to get a list those addresses from somewhere.
  - the8472 3y ago
    > You have to be participating in a torrent swarm in order to bootstrap yourself into DHT at all. This is not correct. > Bittorrent's DHT is not a network independent of torrent swarms. This is also wrong. People have used the DHT for non-torrent-related purposes. > You need the address of a peer who is already part of the network in order to join it, and you have to get a list those addresses from somewhere. And nothing dictates that that has to be obtained via the bittorrent peer protocol. https://stackoverflow.com/a/11089702/1362755 https://stackoverflow.com/a/11089702/1362755

johnchristopher 3y ago

Won't you run into the problem that you will have to generate torrents every time you update your music collection ?

rakoo 3y ago

You don't need an indexer for that. All you need is a static list with all your music, and people can click on links to download your music. Give them qbittorrent and it'll be running smoothly.

jMyles 3y ago
Sure, but I'd like to go beyond magnet links and make it properly decentralized, with the discovery happening in the DHT and torrent swarm.
- anacrolix 3y ago
  Maybe check out how it's done here: https://archive.org/details/the-fanimatrix-div-x-5.1-hq https://archive.org/details/the-fanimatrix-div-x-5.1-hq. They don't seem to provide magnet links, but basically you create a torrent from your music. Host it somewhere (Cloudflare R2 would be good for free egress) in the right structure. Add the webseed endpoint to your torrent file and create a magnet link. Put all this stuff on a website in the download section. Let your users download it however they want.
- rakoo 3y ago
  There is no point in running your own indexer if it's only for your own music though. If your goal is to run a more "communal" indexing point, it also makes sense to build it cooperatively with other artists, listing only content you all care about and want to distribute (rather than doing a filtering after the fact with a general indexer) I like your idea of giving its name back to a technology that just works better, and I think it pairs really well with giving back a humane touch to how we use the internet, computers, and putting people back at the center rather than thinking about tools first !

CharlesW 3y ago

> I want to seamlessly distribute my music through bittorrent, but since I have a small fan base (and thus, a very small potential seeding pool), I found it difficult to connect all the moving parts. Out of curiosity, why not just distribute via R2 or similar, or archive.org if you don't need AuthN/AuthZ? What's the complexity (to you and listeners) of BitTorrent buy you?

jMyles 3y ago
Well, I do distribute via some centralized platforms (including some odious ones like Spotify). But I'd like to put forward a practice that demonstrates that the tools that have been smeared as anti-artist (chiefly but not only bittorrent) are actually compelling tools for independent distribution.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  Thanks, I love it!

felixg3 3y ago

Post your magnet link and I’ll host it on my Amsterdam-based server

throwing_away 3y ago

You can also encourage people to host your content with IPFS, removing the need for a pinning service if there's enough of them.

factormeta 3y ago

Try https://webtorrent.io https://webtorrent.io