Well... by 'average music lover' i ment somebody into music with average skills with computer / torrenting. Being knowledgable in music does not help much in torrenting.

The advices... well, exactly advice i was not looking for. I like to take part, by seeding, or by donating. But uploading anything is the last thing i want,even if the content is free domain. Requires lot of time and dedication which i unfortunately don't have.

I explicitly mentioned that my tips are personal. No one's forcing you to follow them. I just wanted to bring you a different kind of perspective on how to maintain a decent ratio on private music trackers. There are several ways to do that, and the two I indicated happen to be quite easy to execute. However, I can't fathom why you wouldn't engage in uploading. A lot of time and dedication? These communities are built on people sharing their private music libraries, which is not to say that you're obliged.. but still. Contribution is key. Actually, being familiar with audio formats/lingo will greatly strengthen your survivability in music trackers, it does help in torrenting. And by the way, just as an example - it takes no more than 3 minutes to download a free FLAC album from Bandcamp (or elsewhere), create a torrent file and start seeding it. It requires no skill whatsoever.