Free music online

By Adam Rutter
November 13, 2002
MP3 FOR YOU, ME, NOT FREE? Mp3's are becoming harder and harder to find with free sharing providers such as napster being sued, legislated and the like. But can you still find that elusive song you've been looking for? You can, but you might not yet know how. Over the past year many differnet ways to find and collect mp3s have sprung up, and with napster being dragged through the mud, its anyones guess who will come out number 1. We will cover a few different ways you can find those mp3s you want and explain a little bit about each method.

There are many ways you can search for the Mp3's you are looking for. Other Napster-like programs have sprung up, all which charge money for users to download mp3s. Some limiting you to 5 mp3s for $4.99 USD, others which charge a flat rate, All which require a Credit Card to gain access to the site immediately.

However, a program does exist which will connect to a few remaining free servers and allow you to download Mp3s free of charge. This program is called Audiognome. Audiognome is available from www.audiognome.com. It connects to many servers available on the internet which offer the download of Mp3s for free. The Audiognome program itself is also free to download and use. You simply open Audiognome, connect to the servers, then type in the artist or song name you wish to search for, then either click search or hit enter. After a short while your matches will come up. Audiognome is not limited to only 100 search results like Napster was.

Another Alternative for more advanced users is to go on an IRC (Inter Relay Chat). IRC is easy to use, commands range from /nick YourNick to /join #MP3. mIRC a Windows IRC program is available from www.mirc.com. With it you will be able to connect to IRC Networks and find MP3s. Although not as simple to use as audiognome, some of the rarest MP3s can be found from other users on IRC. Canadian Content Interactive Media conducts IRC business on the NeoStats IRC Network which is available at www.neostats.net/network.

Some websites will also offer free MP3s, most of these websites that do this are, the bands own personal websites in which they allow you to download and listen to one or two tracks of their new album release(s).

Other websites such as CDNow (www.cdnow.com) allow you to listen to each track of the cd before you decide to purchase the cd, and is a great resource for testing the quality of any artists cd before you purchase their album(s). This Editor encourages the use of CDNOW to listen and obtain your Audio CD's, as they offer low rates, and a high spectrum of different artists and musical types.

The Peer to Peer protocol (P2P) napster and others use for their filesharing networks is the way of the future. In the future you will be able to use the same technology to share files, mp3s, movies, amongst other items with your friends and family across the internet free of charge.

*** EDITORS NOTE: Canadian Content Interactive Media and the Editor of this article do not in any way encourage the illegal sharing of files across the internet.


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