At least a half-dozen services have picked up large collections of Napster emigres over the past few months. No single service has emerged as a standout that offers the same breadth of obscure music as Napster once did. But many of them are closing in, with hundreds of thousands of people at a time offering their music collections.
Interest has spiked in recent weeks as Napster has struggled to remain a viable service while complying with a court order that it block copyrighted music. Adding to the company's woes, it has been offline for several days this week--forcing traders to look for alternatives.
These rivals' rise is bad news for the record and movie industries, which are increasingly focusing their enforcement actions on these new threats. They have already sued Aimster, one of the most vocal foes of the industries' attempts to persuade all file swappers to start filtering files. They've also started targeting the services that lack companies to sue, asking Internet service providers to shut down activity on the OpenNap and Gnutella networks. But trading on those networks has continued.
The Recording Industry Association of America says it is working with some of the Napster alternatives, hoping to avoid going to court more than necessary.
"We continue to reach out to these other services in the hope that we can work through the legal issues and avoid litigation," said Cary Sherman, the RIAA's general counsel. "If that does not work, we will not shy away from litigation if that's what's necessary."
Individuals have not yet been targeted for trading large numbers of files through one of these services. But some analysts say it's only a matter of time. The courts have indicated that they believe individuals' file swapping is likely to violate copyright law, though no judge has yet ruled directly on this issue.
CNET News.com informally tested six of the most visible Napster alternatives for breadth of offerings, ease of use and other features. The conclusion: File swapping is alive and well on the Internet for now.
As the reviews show, most of the leading file-swapping services have evolved to the point where they offer almost the same things. Only a few limit their searches to audio files, and network watchers say more videos are being traded.
Most have added features that allow downloads to pick up again after they've been interrupted, and a few have created technology that allows people to download files from several places at the same time, speeding and stabilising downloads.
Many of the services, desperate for revenue, also are adding software that pops up unrelated ads when a surfer is on the Web or otherwise tracks someone's activity online. This can be inconvenient and can slow or crash computers.
On the whole, however, the review of the services found that most of the alternatives are comparable, showing only small differences in ease of use and in the number of files actually available at a given time.
Methodology
CNET News.com downloaded each of the leading applications, installed them on IBM Thinkpads running Windows 2000, and searched for five relatively popular songs from several genres. The songs were "Enter Sandman" by Metallica, "Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know" by Britney Spears, "Let it Be" by The Beatles, "Giant Steps" by John Coltrane, and "Moonlight Sonata" by Ludwig van Beethoven. All of the applications varied widely when searching for more obscure songs.
All the searches were done between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. PDT and were performed at least twice over the period of a week. Because the number of people on any given service fluctuates dramatically from hour to hour and day to day--which in turn changes the songs available for download--this guide should be viewed as only a typical snapshot and not as the final word on what is available through the services.
The number of users was taken from the company or from the software itself, when this information was available. Third-party estimates are noted when included.
In several cases, comments are included from individuals who have spent considerable time using a given service and were able to bring out points that shed more light on a side-by-side test.
What about IRC ?
If Napster is the grand daddy then this the great great great grand daddy. Using mIRC with several freely available plug-ins is a great place to swap songs and will never be effected by any legal blah. There are litrally hundreds of mp3 channels to cater for all tastes, plus there are plenty of channels for movies, music video's. If you think IRC is just about chat then you are very wrong.
Although of the list of services that are mentioned in the article, then I must say that Audio Galaxy is my clear favorite. It has a great web based interface, and if the song you are looking for is not currently available, you can still flag it and it will automatically download when the other person comes online.