slskd / Soulseek: Peer-to-Peer Downloads for a Music Server

What the integration needs

Run slskd as its own container, give it a config volume and a listening port, and create its Soulseek credentials in its own web interface. Then add the slskd URL and credentials in Aurral under Download clients.

Aurral drives slskd through its API, which means searches, downloads and cancels map onto slskd's own queue. There is no indexer configuration anywhere in this path, which is the main reason people pick slskd as a first client.

Why Soulseek results land in review

A file from Soulseek waits in the review queue when its duration does not match what Aurral asked for. While it waits, Aurral keeps trying other results and other sources, and only goes to review if none of them verify.

This is deliberate and it catches the most common failure mode of peer-to-peer downloads: a file that is genuinely the right artist and title but is a different recording, a live version, or a preview. Approving a wrong file is worse than waiting thirty seconds, so the default is cautious.

Usenet and deemix results go to review immediately rather than after exhausting alternatives, because their identity is usually declared by the release rather than inferred.

• Approve: the file moves into the library.
• Deny: the file is deleted and the search reruns without it.
• Remove a playlist, album or track waiting in review and its file is deleted too.
• Aurral never deletes a file in the Downloads Folder or a Lidarr root folder this way, for example one deemix saved there.

Source priority and upgrades

Source order decides which client Aurral asks first for a missing track. For upgrades specifically, Aurral searches slskd, then Usenet, then deemix, and stops at the first source that gives a valid, better file. yt-dlp is deliberately excluded from the upgrade path because it cannot guarantee a better version of a specific recording.

You can tune the review queue maximum wait in settings. The default of 0 keeps every waiting track until you decide; a non-zero value denies anything that waits longer than that many hours and reruns the search without the file.

Manual searches in slskd specifically

When automatic results are wrong, you can search one client yourself. In Wanted and Missing, choose Choose a download manually, pick Soulseek from the client list, search, and select from up to 100 results.

A manual choice behaves differently on purpose. Only the result you selected is downloaded, so if it fails the job fails rather than falling back. Title, artist, album and duration are not verified for it. Readable audio of a known quality is still required, and quality tiers your profile has disabled are still accepted for a manual choice.

Search results expire after ten minutes, so pick before the window closes.