iSlsk Brings File-Sharing to iPhone
Written by enigmax on May 15, 2008Those lucky enough to own a ‘jail-broken’ iPhone got a rather pleasant surprise last evening. When refreshing the installer, a brand new application appeared. iSlsk brings the Soulseek file-sharing network directly to iPhone. Download music for free, and listen to it on your iPhone. For most, it’s very nearly that simple.
Soulseek is arguably one the greatest music sharing networks that most of the world has never heard of.
Created by former Napster programmer Nir Arbel, Soulseek can be used to share any type of file, but music is king on this network. Although mainstream music is available, if your tastes wander from the mainstream, if your musical dreams are a little avant garde and independent label-leaning, or you thrive on low frequencies and can’t get enough drum and bass or techno, Soulseek is for you.
If you like the sound of Soulseek and also happen to have a jail-broken iPhone, musical Christmas just came early. Last night, iPhone users with jail-broken devices saw a new application available for download from the ‘Big Boss’ source - ‘iSlsk’ - a free Soulseek port for the iPhone. TorrentFreak caught up with the developer for the lowdown:
TF: Please describe iSlsk
errrick: iSlsk is simply an application that lets you connect, download (and share, in the future) music directly from your iPod/iPhone through the Soulseek network. Anywhere, no computer required. That’s what makes “iSlsk” special and different from all other Soulseek clients out there.
TF: When did you start work on iSlsk and what motivated you to do so?
errrick: On February, 2008. What motivated me? Well. First of all, I saw all the capabilities this little gadget had and then thought “why didn’t someone already do something like this?”. A long time ago I did some little web application (just for fun) which let me connect to the Soulseek chat rooms from a web interface (written entirely in ASP.NET and C#). So I already had some experience with the protocol. Then I saw new applications being added everyday so I thought “Hey, making applications for the iPhone shouldn’t be that hard”… And thought how useful it would be to have a P2P client (first for me, then for the people) so I started learning and developing it myself.
TF: Tell us a little more about iSlsk from a technical viewpoint
errrick: In terms of code and programming, it’s entirely written in Objective-C (like most Cocoa and iPhone apps). The core of the application was made with the help of some open source Soulseek clients for mac (SolarSeek, SoleSeek). When I started developing it I was really afraid the iPhone/iPod wouldn’t be able to support for example, a high number of connections, constant byte transferring from peers and such. At that time I ran into thousands of problems which almost frustrated me, but most of them were really because I was a total newbie to Cocoa and Obj-C and not because of a hardware or software limitation like I thought.
TF: Thanks for your time.
Downloading and installation of the 224.5kb package takes a few seconds and then you’re away. At this point it has a basic file search and a display of any downloads queued along with progress. Media is downloaded to /var/mobile/Media/Downloads on any firmware above 1.1.3.
A nice feature is the ability to import the downloaded files straight into the iPod music database so they can be played immediately with the normal controls. There have been issues with this feature which are being addressed for the next update but in the meantime, here is a full workaround and great general tutorial from iPhoneFreakz.
Here is a video of iSlsk v0.1b in action:
The developer, ‘errrick’, can be found here.
Of course, Soulseek is not just for iPhone and as there are many thousands of unsigned artists populating the network, it’s worth checking out the PC version too.
Thanks to IIIALC
Previously: Understanding Anti-Piracy Enforcement
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would be a expensive way to get free music with data costs i would imagin
A decent Soulseek client for Mac OS X would be pretty awesome too.
@ yawho
don’t use a data connection, use your router :D
I pay €9,50 a month for my mobile connection and have unlimited data transfer. It is however only a 128/32 connection, but it works. I myself use Adisasta wmTorrent on my windows mobile device.
Probably a dumb question.. but does this need jailbreak, or is it written using the official SDK from Apple?
From the subheadline:
“Those lucky enough to own a ‘jail-broken’ iPhone”
Ahhh another nail in the Music industries coffin… or silver bullet for the music copyright beast!
HEHEHe love it!
Maybe more people in Finland should start buying iphones because of their problems (see 2 articles back right here on TF)
Cheers!
http://www.ezee.se/
Anyone thought of using blue tooth/wireless for a localised peer system?
I’ve tried soulseek, and I’m not a big fan. Out of the 20 songs I searched for, I think I found 4, and they were all the wrong mixes.
The only problem that I see with this is people will not use their iPhones to seed, however, they will most likely still seed on their computers which they leave on all the time, so i should just shut up now.
soulseek…… it’s hard to believe anyone still uses the regular slsk, seeing as how it is a wide open door into your machine, and besides that, the program sucks and everyone sharing on it has little to no idea what they are doing with a pc. I could only imagine how easy your iphone could be hacked into with that garbage program on it…. complete idiocy, on the programmers side and anyone who uses it.
If some “social” zune-style sharing between iPhones or iPod touches could be arranged, this might look even hotter.
ad-hoc networks are perfect for sharing: the beast doesn’t will never know it ever happened, and I’m sure there’s already 100x more iPod touches out there than Zunes.
anyone working on a torrent client!
This is truely awesome. The iphone seems like a great tool p2p. If it can use Java it can use Dargens p2p ( http://www.Dargens.com ).
This is open source. Just need somone to try it out iron out the bugs and release a version. Then you will be able to download and share anonymously with iphone.
Excellent idea for a program :) Useful if you have a good connection from it.
Thanks for exposing this network to thousands of readers. :(
It would be really great if you could share all your songs on your ipod with other people using this like limewire or napster does, and be able to play all of their songs.
digg this story:
http://digg.com/tech_news/iSlsk_Brings_File_Sharing_to_iPhone
make it share, or else it’s bullshit.
I’d love a version of this for my PocketPC phone. Screw Apple’s bullshit.
Anyone thought of using blue tooth/wireless for a localised peer system?
I’ve thought about this for awhile. Particularly on a type of portable media player with WIFI and some kind of file sharing app. Always on. Wherever you walk, people nearby with the same units files are available and can be transferred at will. Would be a great tool.
soulseek is no pre-Sept. 2002 AudioGalaxy, that’s for sure, but no P2P filesharing service is. It’s also not closely related to BitTorrent, so I don’t understand why it’s being mentioned on this site. Is this now a general file-sharing news blog?
@22
Yes it useful news. Go cry somewhere else.
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