Where to find the best music torrents in 2024: Top picks
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Music makes our lives better. Suddenly, the commute becomes more manageable, the workout is easier, and the day in the office flows by faster.
The problem is we can’t listen to the same song or album forever. We need novelty and a continuous stream of new emotions that music gives us. So where do we go to find new music?
- Top Torrent Sites for Downloading Music
- The Most Popular Niche Music Torrents
- Is it safe to use music torrents?
- How do you support music legally?
One option is to buy music on iTunes — one of the largest online music stores. While most of the songs cost just $0.99 and albums $9.99, these prices do add up quickly if you’re listening to music regularly. It’s not uncommon to meet people with multi-thousand dollar libraries.
For those who don’t have a music budget to set aside, there’s another way — it’s possible to torrent music online as well. If you’ve used music torrent sites in the early 2000s and thought they would be gone by now, it’s not the case. There are lots of music torrents still where you can find your favorite tracks.
Note: The legality of music torrenting is a fine line. While it’s not illegal to use torrents or download music through them, it is illegal to infringe on copyrights without explicit permissions from the copyright holders.
Top Torrent Sites for Downloading Music
As opposed to websites that host files, torrents essentially connect two or more users to each other to enable them to exchange data — that’s why torrenting is considered to be a peer-to-peer, or P2P, protocol. When you download a file using torrents, you download it directly from someone else, who is seeding the file to you.
Since torrents work as P2P networks, they require specific software to use them, called a torrent client. Our favorite is Folx.
Folx is the easiest way to download what you want online, from YouTube videos to torrent files to anything else directly from any website. Moreover, there’s a built-in search, so you don’t even have to spend hours on the web finding the right file — Folx will do it for you and bring up the best results to the top.
To download any torrent file with Folx:
- Launch the app
- Click the plus icon in the top bar
- Switch to the Torrent tab
- Select the ellipses and find the torrent file on your Mac
- Hit OK
Now that you know how to download files from any torrent site, which one should you use to get your music?
All-in-One: The Pirate Bay
One of the original and perhaps most famous torrent trackers is The Pirate Bay. As a general server, The Pirate Bay indexes torrents across all mediums, from movies to games to apps. But it’s also great for music torrenting.
Pros: A truly large and loyal user base means that there’s always someone seeding even the most difficult-to-find files and popular ones download with lightning speed.
Cons: For a while now, The Pirate Bay has been under the scrutiny of law enforcement and copyright holders, which even led to the tracker creating special magnet torrent links that allow you to connect with the seed directly, without downloading a torrent file first. Such attention also means that your downloading activity could be closely monitored by the copyright holders and your ISP (internet service provider).
Additionally, The Pirate Bay is full of irrelevant ads and pop-ups, which could be annoying if you want to get to your download as soon as possible.
No Ads: LimeTorrents
In many ways, LimeTorrents fixes the cons of The Pirate Bay but lacks some of its strengths too. However, it’s definitely a good alternative resource to check when hunting for something that’s quite popular.
Pros: A lightweight website that is devoid of ads and doesn’t get as much public attention as The Pirate Bay while still retaining a large number of torrent files across all types, including music.
Cons: A smaller user base, so some less popular music files either don’t exist or don’t support fast downloading due to lack of seeds.
Obscure Finds: TorrentDownloads
Another highly-recommended general-purpose torrent tracker is TorrentDownloads, which features a very straightforward, forum-like interface and contains a massive library of files, including many subsections for music specifically.
Pros: A large library with rare music finds.
Cons: Torrent files here are not verified so you’re always at risk of downloading some sort of malware with your file — be extra careful!
The Most Popular Niche Music Torrents
General torrent trackers discussed above are definitely a good starting point for your search — most of the time you’ll find what you need in no time. However, they might not be the best place for niche bands and, due to the increasing copyright oversight, they might have to remove some popular music as well.
So what do you do? The answer is you turn to torrents that specialize on music only. Often, these music torrent sites have gathered large enthusiastic communities around the world that share the same passion and share all possible genres with each other. Here are some of the best ones out there.
Soundpark
As one of the largest torrent music websites online, Soundpark is an audiophile’s dream. You can download any music imaginable, across all genres, and in truly lossless quality (or MP3 as well).
Pros: No registration required, although registration provides higher downloading speed and access to the latest albums.
Cons: Not the best user experience and too many ads.
Music Torrent
If what you value in music torrents is being able to quickly discover new releases across specific genres, then you should try music-torrent.net. This simple website is intuitive and doesn’t distract you with pop-ups or ads.
Pros: Beautiful design and user-friendly navigation.
Cons: No user-generated, emerging music. Just professional artists.
Mixtape Torrent
Lastly, for those who are after the latest DJ sets and unique playlists, there’s mixtapetorrent.com. This niche website allows you to torrent music that’s been remixed and uploaded by creators worldwide.
Pros: One-of-a-kind tracks that you won’t find anything else.
Cons: Little other music, so needs to be used together with other music torrent sites.
Is it safe to use music torrents?
Given that lots of music torrent sites don’t look overly trustworthy, one of the most frequent questions people ask concerns the safety of your Mac. There are three sides to this.
First, most torrent websites use lots of annoying ads, pop-ups, and trackers that monitor and monetize your online activity. While not actively harmful, they do cause a lot of privacy issues.
Second, some websites, such as TorrentDownloads, don’t actively screen their files, and some could contain malware that might damage your Mac.
Third, as mentioned above, your ISP and copyright holders could be looking through your connections and enforcing legal action if you’re found violating copyright laws.
While the best way to protect yourself against malicious files is to use high-quality torrent trackers, when it comes to privacy, your best bet is a VPN (virtual private network).
ClearVPN is one of the most intuitive and beautifully designed VPN solutions. Not only does it bypass any geographical restrictions (by funnelling traffic through servers in different countries), it also encrypts your internet connection and anonymizes your profile to the websites you visit. Living in your Mac’s menu bar, ClearVPN comes with a variety of useful presets, all of which can be turned on in one click.
How do you support music legally?
One of the main reasons for the ongoing decline in the use of music torrents has been the rise of streaming, which is a much easier way to listen to music. Instead of tinkering with a torrent client, finding and downloading files, and transferring them to all your devices, you just sign up for a service and listen and save as much as you want for around $9.99 a month.
Popular streaming music services include Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Deezer, and Amazon Music. The problem with them all, however, is how little money the artists actually get from every stream — much, much less than they used to get from an album sale.
If you want to support indie and emerging musicians, you should check out Bandcamp, which lets artists upload and charge for their own music, whether those are CDs, vinyl, or online downloads.
As you can see, using music torrent sites is quite easy when you have Folx finding the best files for you across the web and you protect your privacy with ClearVPN.
Best of all, Folx and ClearVPN are available to you absolutely free for seven days through the trial of Setapp, a platform with more than 210 outstanding Mac apps for any task, from enhancing your audio with Boom 3D to recovering lost files with Disk Drill. Try all Setapp apps today at no cost and open the world of new possibilities!
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