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Welcome to the Napster Alternatives page. Napster used to be the one to beat as a file-sharing system for MP3s but now with it almost dead it's time for others to get recognition. Napster is likely to return, but on a paid basis. At it's peak Napster served millions of users. None of the alternatives mentioned here will have that kind of user base and the amount of files available, but that is only a matter of time - and a short one at that. The new generation of file sharing programs let you download anything, including e-books, movies, pictures and of course MP3s. I will not enter into any kind of copyright debate - what's out there is out there. However, some legal methods of downloading music are slowly becoming available - Try Wippit I have tested these programs by searching for simple files. Read further down the page to find the results. Have fun! A Note on `GAIN`: Please note that both Grokster and Kazaa (clients for the FastTrack network) use GAIN (formerly Gator) for a revenue source. Gain periodicaly pops up adverts or advert sites as you browse. There isn't much you can do about this - but while you aren't using the download clients you can kill the ad-server by pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE and stopping the process. GAIN is pretty intrusive but you can't blame the programmers for trying to make money out of their otherwise free products :-) Special Offer: Get MusicMatch Plus
Items of interest on eBay (tm)  Keep up to date with latest news & programs. Free offers! powered by Mojo Mail OpenNap uses the Napster protocol but allows users to swap files other than MP3s. The other difference with OpenNap is that you link servers and do not work through a central server. OpenNap stores NO files, it is just a protocol allowing users to share files and the downloaded file does NOT travel through the Napster/OpenNap server. This is something it shares with most of the new-generation file sharing technologies and makes it practically impossible to shut down. To use OpenNap you must download a client program, and there are many available for a lot of different OS`s and machines. For Win32 try one such as WinMX. There are even clients that work as plugins to WinAmp or run in Java! To download a client go to: http://opennap.sourceforge.net/ Gnutella Gnutella is again a file-sharing protocol. Again it works in a similar fashion to Napster by acting as a directory and search engine for users to swap files with one another. Again (sounds familiar?) you are not limited to MP3s. Officially Gnutella ceased to exist - the programmers Gnullsoft stopped developement. It is continued by other programmers unofficially. Gnutella uses many servers so there isn`t one server to shut down. Gnutella is also (almost) totally anonymous, apart from when you download, but even then it is close enough. Gnutella is probably the one of the most promising file sharing networks for past Napster users. Again there are many Gnutella clients to chose from, go to http://www.gnutelliums.com/ to download one! I recomend BearShare Go to http://gnutella.wego.com/ for more info on Gnutella. FastTrack The FastTrack system is built upon the Fasttrack Peer-2-peer system. Again this should be difficult to shut down (even though some try) as there is no central server to close. FastTrack is one of the best P2P file sharing systems for the average home user. With features such as automatic resumes, multiple downloads, a very fast and advanced search engine and perhaps more important many users and a large number of files. FastTrack lets you search for files on any criteria. In fact it makes the meta-data available for you to search on so you can have searches for Album, Title, Author, Length, Bitrate and much more. The multiple download feature automatically downloads a file in several parts from different servers, vastly speeding up the download. And the auto resume feature will save you being cut of mid download. It will even get the file you want from the quickest connection possible. FastTrack is a safe, secure network running over multiple computers without any central control. Servers called SuperNodes will automatically be set up on computers that are powerful enough and they come and go throughout the network. All this means that FastTrack should not end up falling into the Napster trap. There are three main programs you can use to access this network. Kazaa , Grokster and Morpheus. Kazaa did have some controversy with its "Spyware" ad-serving software installed along with the main program, see Scumware for more information on this. Kazaa also comes as a Winamp plugin. The FastTrack client programs usually come with built in playlists, media library, integrated movie/music player and picture/document viewer. These are by far the most downloaded P2P clients on the net. Freenet This is the last of the big three protocols touted as Napsters inheritor. Freenet is perhaps the most exciting, and works unlike the others. Perhaps more importantly it is the most secure and has anonymity built in. Freenet is a peer-to-peer network (similar to the others) which means the you do NOT connect to a central fileserver or servers but computers talk direct to one another. Freenet uses a dynamic process in which the search time is kept to a minimum, and Freenet should in theory be totally secure and anonymous, making a shutdown almost impossible! Freenet is a big advocate of freedom on the internet but like the others its success depends on how many people use it. Note that currently Freenet runs in Java and is difficult to use. You must search for a `key` for a file that you want and then download that key, an unfamiliar way for most users. Go to http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ for more information and downloads. For easy step by step instructions go to http://www.freenetproject.org/quickguide/intro.html FTP FTP is not a program, it stands for File Transfer Protocol. If you are familiar with the internet you probably allready know about FTP downloads, but if you are a novice read on. FTP is the process by which you download a file, similar in a way to HTTP which is the process by which you download a HyperText Document, or Web Page. FTP allows you to connect to another computer directly and download from its directories, or at least those to which you have access. In the days before Napster or even the Web this was the primary way in which you accessed internet resources. Today a lot of FTP sites still exist from which you can get MP3s (ahh... the good bit!). To access a FTP site you can use the windows/dos FTP program (the hard way), your Internet Browser (easier) or a dedicated FTP client (the best). To use your browser simply type ftp://ftp.nameofsite.com or similar into the address bar in the same way you'd access a web page. You will usually be shown a view similar to the Windows Explorer program, i.e. a selection of files and directories. The best way though is to use a good FTP client. I recommend using CuteFTP. Note that that link downloads from the CuteFTP FTP server, a good example of using FTP! The next thing is to find an FTP site that holds MP3s. I cannot list a good one here as they change often, but try searching usenet or the web. IRC IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. For the novice this can be quite difficult to use, but for downloading fresh MP3s (or anything dubious/illegal really) this is the place to go. IRC exists as a number of servers each running a number of chat channels. For example to find MP3s go to the #MP3 channel on the "Undernet" server. Popular IRC servers include Efnet, Dalnet, Undernet, IRCnet. To get files from IRC you can either have someone send it to you or download from an IRC Fileserver. An IRC Fileserver is a direct connection to another IRC users hard drive, so in effect you create a peer-to-peer network. Using a FileServer is just like using DOS or Unix, with familiar commands such as CD and DIR. One thing with IRC Fileservers (in common with FTP) is the ratios they sometimes use. For example 1:4 means for every byte you upload you can download 4 in return, so if you send them a 3mb MP3 file you are now allowed to download 12mbs for yourself. There is really only one program to consider using for IRC and thats mIRC - the all conquering IRC client! You can also run mIRC in your web-browser NOW by going to mIRCX Web Pages Again this is not really a program but there are good websites out there. I highly recommend PeopleSound.Com Other Programs I could list a *LOT* of other programs but nearly all of them will use the same networks, usually Napster, OpenNap and Gnutella. If you wish to look for them search in Download.com for "Peer to Peer networks" and try them out. Try programs such as Limewire, AudioGnome and Rapigator. Finally, try using Audio Galaxy - the inocquous looking search box at the top of the page is a very powerful MP3 search engine! It uses peer-to-peer networking so you download from other users and utilises a small download to accompany the web page called "Sattelite". Try it! I have tested the main programs by searching for a simple file using wildcards and downloading something. The search string I used was back*.mp3, and this should give at least something in all of programs. I was just looking for reliability, speed, and variety. Im on a 56K modem connection. Napster - downloaded "Billy Madison - Back to School.mp3" as it was only 194K. Napster, as expected, quickly offered 100 titles to download with most of the big names there. 9/10. Gnutella - using the BearShare client. Found a LOT of titles (in excess of 4000 before I stopped it!). Succesfully downloaded the title "Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline - Back in baby's arms - patsy.mp3" which was 1.4 mb in about 5 mins. Impressed! 8/10. OpenNap - using the WinMX client. Succesfully downloaded "Elton John - Thebithchisback.mp3" which was 382k. This was downloaded from the Napster servers. Quite quick and a nice interface. Returned loads of results from many servers. 7/10. Freenet Failed to download anything. FastTrack - using the Grokster client. Successfully downloaded "Back in the UK" by Scooter which was 3197k. Found many items to download. 9/10. Verdict By far the most impressive network is the FastTrack network, closely followed by Gnutella. However, the best clients (for Windows at least) are those developed for FastTrack such as Kazaa or Grokster or Morpheus. I would highly recommend you use these. If you are downloading a lot of files you may be better of accessing a good FTP server or using IRC. However, these are not for beginners. |
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