Working on completely replacing Spotify completely. Soulseek has popped up a few times here and there among forums and here on lemmy, so I thought I'd give that a go. I've started with getting Nicotine+ client and seems to be working fine. However, what does the traffic look like when downloading/uploading things over the Soulseek network? I read its peer-to-peer network, but does that mean I don't need a VPN? I'm also told to open a port on my router, I'm assuming this is so that I can share my own library with the rest of the network, but how safe is this?
If anyone could help my clarify this I'd greatly appreciate it!
Depends. If where you live is very strict with piracy, I'd suggest you do. Otherwise, don't bother. Note that port-forwarding is required; hence no Mullvad, for example.
Why do I keep seeing people say port forwarding is required on different topics
Because peer-to-peer connectivity works like that. That's why it's called peer to peer: you connect directly to the other peer, hence you need a port open and you are usually not connected directly to the internet, but through a router/switch/whatever, which in turn should forward the connection on that port to your client app.