I've been using bearshare and kazaa. I prefer bearshare because there's a good amount of cable modem (i've hit 200-600kbps download on this!) users (i'm on dsl). Kazaa is great for finding hard to find tracks, but relatively much slower (never hit more than 50kbps download). So whats ur program of choice?

George

Well... My prefered download method is a trip the the used CD shop (I don't buy new since the RIAA started messing around with copy protection) pickup some cool CDs then I use EAC to rip and LAME to encode (--r3mix -b 32 -B 320).

Fifst off *I* control the quality (up to the CD source) as most of the stuff available for download is total crap.

Secondly, I have a thing for full albums. I don't really listen to 'songs' as much as whole albums.

So, to download I would have to hunt around all night to find 90% of an album only to listen to tracks of varying quality most of which sounded like ****.

Honestly, I really don't see how the RIAA views these P2P services as bad for business. Maybe the people that use them are deaf or something.

So there's the technical reasons why you should buy your music, there are tons of moral reasons to do the same. But I'm hardly one to talk there as I don't usually buy a CD until I borrow someone else's to rip and listen. This way I get what I want now but I do make a point to buy what I have it just may take a while before Second Spin has it (or I just break down and buy it new).

I'm also quite fond of the buy one get two free deals from the CD clubs. I usually order $300-$500 worth of media on those. Of course, the artists get royally screwed through this but it's all legal. I ususally don't do this with bands I like and listen to a lot.

I read that Kazaa and Morpheus install spyware without asking your permission, and it doesnt uninstall with the main program... So I avoid those programs because A) I dont like being spied on and B) even if I decided to allow a company to spy on me I would appreciate it if when I stopped using their software they stopped spying on me.

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Gees, that's the only way for POOR students, like me, to maximize their music collection with minimum cost.
"When your mouth is full, don't complain about the food.

i subscribe to emuisc, mainly for the kids as I'm not a big mp3 fan. It gives them a multitude of music that sounds fine on their systems.

I have found the odd obsure gem, and emusic does a good job of getting material that will never be on CD.

M

Well, i've turned to these programs to download songs that i would normally not buy the cd. Any cd or artists i really like i will buy without hesitation. I did the BMG and Columbia house thing for a while and cleaned house, i have a little over 1,000 cds, so i'm outta physical space! Basically, i'm just hunting down those early 80's new wave songs..cool stuff!

George

ps. i dont like the fact that kazaa spies on your downloads, imagine if metallica go after them i might be sitting in front of Congress testifying!!!! LOL

I use Morpheus to try before I buy. Simply put, if I like the majority of stuff I hear from an artist, I buy the cd. If I don't, then I don't waste the money on the cd. Either way, I delete the mp3s afterwards, simply because if I'm going to listen to something, I want the highest possible sound quality.

As far as spyware goes, a quick Google search yielded conflicting results. A few posts say Morpheus has spyware, but the majority say it doesn't. Maybe different versions have or don't have spyware. I don't think mine does. There is a consensus that Kazaa has spyware, though.

Oh oh

How do I go about getting rid of Kazaa's SpyWare?

And where do I get BearShare?

Just goes to show you... Napster+Napigator is always a good idea...

Adaware is an excellent and free tool for getting rid of most major spyware systems. I'm not 100% sure whether it takes care of Kazaa, but I imagine that it does, since Kazaa is pretty well-known...

I only get mp3s occasionally, like when a friend tells me to get something or something I heard on the radio... I use gnutella for this. Otherwise, my CDs usually come from ebay.

I prefer Audiogalaxy for searching for mp3s. I prefer to rip my own monkey's audio tracks, but when looking for new music, mp3 is the only way to go. I just deal with the 128k crappiness most everything comes in.

Why Audiogalaxy? It has an extremely supeior search setup. Of course, this is only if you want the most common version of each mp3 and they are usually 128k, but again it is good enough to listen to the music for what it is. It automagically queues everything, you don't need to worry about what users have it at all. Transfer speeds can be excellent. The auto continue when a user disconnects is great, because on AG specifically, there will be hundreds of others with the same file on their PC and because AG is centralized you get it automatically, and are dealing with a much larger user base (Whereas on the p2p apps you are dealing with a small subset).

Problems with AG: less high quality mp3s, only 10 simultaneous downloads (But you don't need to think about anything at all, they queue up automatically and download when they can. Optional spyware on install if you aren't careful, interface is ODD.