How people find music online now
A few years back, Soulseek was the go-to place for tracking down rare or independent tracks. Today there are many streaming and discovery services — Last.fm, Deezer, Pandora and others — but Soulseek still serves as a reliable peer-to-peer option for downloading music that’s hard to find elsewhere.
Getting Soulseek working on macOS
While the official Soulseek client is straightforward to install and use on Windows, macOS users often need an alternative. One commonly used replacement is SoulseeX, which recreates much of the Soulseek experience for Mac systems.
What SoulseeX offers
- In-app chat for trading tips and recommending tracks to other users
- Tools to monitor and control your current downloads and uploads
- A way to browse who’s online and what they’re sharing
Windowed layout and workflow
SoulseeX uses a multi-window design rather than a single consolidated interface. Some people prefer everything in one window, but the separate panes can be rearranged to suit your desktop and give you more control over what’s visible at once.
Reliability and updates
SoulseeX connects quickly to the Soulseek network and is simple to install, but it has a reputation for instability and occasional crashes. More importantly, it hasn’t received updates since April 2006, so any persistent bugs are unlikely to be fixed.
Alternatives and final thoughts
If the quirks and lack of maintenance are a dealbreaker, you might consider mainstream P2P tools (for example, lightweight BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent are widely available). Despite its awkward interface and age-related issues, SoulseeX remains the most fully featured Soulseek client for macOS available at the moment.
Technical
- Mac
- Free
