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First off we should hit on the MP3 revolution on the 'net. Some of the music that we own started out as an MP3 that we found on the net. MP3s have been a way for us to find artists that we really like. We'd never found Antiloop if we hadn't gotten an MP3 by them. The music industry is all for the banning of MP3s because they see it as a threat to their bank accounts. Lemme tell ya this... The jewel boxes and paper inserts cost more to manufacture than a CD. The record companies are raking in the money. An MP3 is not going to kill them and besides most people that get MP3s buy the music in album form. And as I said before... we'd not know one tenth of the artists that we now do if it weren't for MP3s. If you're serious about getting MP3s on the 'net then there's a couple ways to find and acquire the files. First I should say that if you're trying to find MP3s on a web site you might as well abandon all hope. 90% of the time if you are looking for an MP3 on a web site you'll end up at T50.com thus making money for the web site owned and NOT getting the MP3 that you are looking for or ANY MP3 for that matter. Give up web MP3 sites and learn to use a good FTP program like CuteFTP or WSFTP. This is essential. You can do FTP via your Netscape or IE browser but it's a pain and they don't support resuming when you get knocked off of a site for whatever reason and your file is not completely downloaded. How do I find MP3s? There are esentially two methods of finding MP3s. One is the web based search engine and the other is IRC (Internet Relay Chat.) Here's the two best web sites to help you find new music in MP3 format: AudioGalaxy: This is probably the best search engine on the 'net for MP3s. This site gives you a list of ONLY those FTP sites that are up and running at the moment you do the search. AudioGalxy also tells you your chances of getting on the site, speed of the site, whether or not there's a ratio, and all the other pertinent info that you need. If there's another site as good as this one that please tell me about it! MP3 Box: This searcher is pretty good but can be a little behind due the huge number of MP3 sites that come and go. Unlike AudioGalaxy this site lists all sites that it has in it's databases whether or not they're up at the time or even still exist for that matter. But that all being said MP3 Box is still a very good resource. As for finding MP3s via IRC... well this can be very tedious and time consuming but it does work and sometimes you'll find sites this way that you would have never found by any other method. First you'll need a good IRC client. I recommend mIRC. mIRC is fast, small, and it works really well. If you are going to go the IRC rout then you should probably look on EFNet for MP3 channels. Just do a "/list mp3" in your IRC client and you'll get a list of every non-hidden channel that has MP3 in the name or subject. Enter the channels that you think might be of the genre you're looking for and watch for site ads and even ask the other users if they know where to find the song that you are looking for. Now that you have an MP3 you need something to play it with. If you are using Windows 98 then it's media player can play them... not too well but it'll play them. The most popular player for Windows is probably WinAMP. It's a decent player with a lot of room for custimization through 'Skins'. Skins allow you to change the look of the player to suit you. You can make your own or just download any of the thousands that are available. WinAMP is often updated and although this may sound like a good thing it also means that everytime they do an update to fix a bug or add a feature they often end up adding a few new bugs. Another player that I'm fond of is Sonique. Sonique is a very cool player and I've never had it crash on me. It's very stable and has a great decoding engine. It's not as customizable as WinAMP but it's got a really nice look to it. Definitely worth checking out if you're looking for a player. Both of these players will also play wav, voc, it, xm, mp2, mpg, and several other file formats as well as music CDs. |
Hell yes! I support free speech on the 'net! Maybe you should too.
