Yes, the music there is drm free. Keep in mind it's not ALL music. It's mostly music from independent artists. But they are the ones that need the most support. So go all in!

Bandcamp is pretty great. I usually stream from their app but you can download music you buy in a bunch of formats.

I like their writeups they do sometimes (like a "best doom metal from Texas" deep dive)

They do Bandcamp Fridays sometimes where they yield their share of the sale to the artists.

I've also had artists write back a few times when I put a comment in the box when buying stuff. Most notably an invite to a show they were playing once.

They did get bought by epic though so they're not indie anymore. A bummer. But epic hasn't shit it up yet so far as I know.

IMO, Bandcamp is one of the best places to go if you actually want to support artists. Spotify and other streaming options tend to be the worst.

Yup that's exactly why it has flourished in the past decade or so

I bought music from several artists on Bandcamp and could not download some of it 12 months later. Artist unresponsive, Bandcamp support unwilling to help. And now Tencent has it's tendrils in the company so expect it to get worse.

Soulseek is p2p. I prefer to use a VPN but it is not necessary. What is necessary is port forwarding if you want to share your own files. You can either set that up in your router, or through your VPN if you're using one (it must be a VPN that supports port forwarding)

its p2p download from other users, if you want to share your library you should probably use a VPN. You dont have to share your library but its kind of frowned upon to not do it.

It's p2p, and the protocol is not very secure. You should probably use a VPN, yes. The content shared is really good, even if it has slowly decreased along the years. Just be selective about who you tell about slsk to help keep it under the radar, please. First rule of the blue bird is : don't speak of the blue bird.

Nicotine is working fine for me. Although I'll have to check out soulseek-qt myself to see if there is any difference in search results Up until now, I haven't had problems finding anything unless it was something that was released within the week (usually singles)(which I just rip from youtube)