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Hungry for music? A look at Napster alternatives

From...

By Michael Gowan

(IDG) -- Just when you really started to get into Napster, exchanging tracks with unknown others across the world, Napster lost its court case. Trading copyrighted music on the site was declared illegal and the company began blocking downloads of your favorite hits. What's a music lover to do? Fans of free file trading take heart: No matter whether Napster lives, dies, or mutates into a pay service, you still have abundant alternatives.

Napster's overwhelming success spawned dozens of competitors offering peer-to-peer music sharing -- and in some cases even more. We tried the most promising 25 (out of at least 60 available). Our testing found four Napster alternatives that are good at what they do and a few more that show promise.

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We tested each tool for ease of use, and evaluated the song selection available. We searched for popular songs, like Jennifer Lopez's Top 40 hit "Love Don't Cost a Thing." We sought songs that are filtered on Napster, such as Metallica's "Enter Sandman." And we looked for the obscure, in this instance a San Francisco-based jazz ensemble named Tin Hat Trio. All were available on Napster before the service began filtering. A couple of sites in development look interesting, but weren't ready for our testing.

If you have ethical concerns about using Napster, the alternative sites offer some solace. None has been taken to court for violating copyright laws -- though many of the sites do freely share copyrighted materials, the same thing that got Napster in trouble. If you want to avoid any worries about illegal sharing, you can use one of the many sites that charge users a fee to download copyrighted music.

Gnutella versus OpenNap

Most of these upstart tools are based on two types of networks: OpenNap and Gnutella. OpenNap, short for Open Source Napster, works (as the name implies) just like Napster: You log in to a single, centralized server that mediates your search for a file. When you find one you want, you connect directly to the PC that has it for download.

But unlike Napster, which had one massive central server, hundreds of OpenNap servers exist, and you can use an OpenNap-compatible application such as Napigator or WinMX to access any of them to find music. The upside is that the less-centralized OpenNap system prevents the servers from being shut down quickly; the downside is that your search results on one server will suffer due to the fractured nature of the OpenNap peer-to-peer music community.

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On the other hand, Gnutella is a decentralized network -- no central server facilitates searching and downloading. When you access its network, you connect to another PC that is already on the network. Through that computer, you are connected to another computer, and another and so on, in a daisy-chain fashion. It's common to connect to three PCs, each of which connects to three computers.

When you search for a file, Gnutella first checks the computers you are directly connected to, then (if it doesn't find the song) sends the search criteria down the chain. When the results come back, your PC makes a direct connection to the computer that has the file. Applications such as BearShare or LimeWire use the Gnutella network.

Advantages and problems

Both networks have their advantages. Unlike Napster, you can trade any kind of file you want, not just MP3 files. Searching on an OpenNap network is generally faster than searching on Gnutella, because a central computer already knows what files everyone has. Gnutella also slows as more users sign on. But Gnutella has one big advantage over Napster and OpenNap networks: Because it's decentralized, there is no single server that can be shut down.

All the Napster alternatives inherit some of Napster's problems: Downloaded files can sound bad, they can be incomplete, or you could get an error that stops the download mid-transfer. But there's an additional problem: A sharing network is only as useful as the users (and files) on it. According to Lee Black, director of research for digital entertainment research firm Webnoize, "Five users on Napster aren't worth a lot. Sixty million users are." None of the other services have nearly as large a user base as Napster's.

"Napster changed everything," says Dannielle Romano, an associate analyst with research firm Jupiter Media Metrix. But the alternatives don't have much incentive to improve. Created mostly by hobbyists, the software isn't as user-friendly as Napster. That's not likely to change: There's no financial incentive to make the experience easy for non-geeks. In the end, these programs tend to be more difficult to configure and use than commercial software made by a company that's in it for profit, Black says.

One typical downside to OpenNap is that it Balkanizes Napster's massive music community: You may need to search several OpenNap servers to get results. Each server is a separate fiefdom, and the only way to figure out which one might have the music you're looking for is to pick a few and keep trying. With Gnutella, you have a different problem: The search will likely find the target song, but it could take hours to wend its way through the Gnutella network of users.

One more thing to consider when you're looking at a file-sharing program: Unless you've paid for a copyrighted piece of music (such as when you buy the CD), it's illegal to download it. Although Black and Romano say the FBI probably won't knock on your door to arrest you for copyright violations -- it tends to go after the big fish, like Napster -- you're still breaking the law.

Subscription music around the corner

If you're looking for clearly legal alternatives, you might want to take a look at sites in the works that will charge a subscription to download music.

Every major record label is working on a service that will let you download songs for a monthly fee. Sony Music plans to launch a service called Duet this summer; Bertelsmann AG has invested in Napster to create a pay service as well. Other record companies are working on ways to license their songs to subscription services. These services will provide the same easy access to digital music as Napster did, and promise you a guaranteed sound quality and more stable downloads.

Gnutella-based utilities

BearShare: Gnutella clone BearShare's plain-Jane interface hides its greatest talent: lightning-fast downloads. We sometimes reached speeds of 300 kilobits per second when downloading files -- much faster than any other application we tested, including Napster. Of course, not all downloads were that fast, but overall, BearShare worked faster than the rest. To get the fastest downloads, look for the full green bar in the Quality of Service column in the search window. The biggest downside is that BearShare pays the bills with an advertising applet that spawns ads in small windows at random intervals.

LimeWire: There's no reason your file-sharing application shouldn't look good. The Mac OS-influenced interface of LimeWire was the best-looking of all the applications we tested. But looks aren't all this Gnutella clone has: LimeWire creates a separate tab for each MP3 search you perform in that session, so you can look at the results again with a single click. The downside? Downloads were generally slow, and LimeWire couldn't find our local band.

OpenNap-based tools

Napigator: If you're comfortable with the Napster interface, why use anything else? The OpenNap-compatible Napigator works like a plug-in to Napster. When you start Napigator, it launches the Napster application. To access an OpenNap MP3 server (which doesn't filter the popular music now banned on the regular Napster service), click the Napigator icon (it looks like a little alligator) at the top of the Napster interface. Napigator spawns a window in which you choose from dozens of OpenNap servers. Then you use the Napster application's interface to search and download--just as if you were still hooked up to the Napster service.

The only downside: Figuring out which OpenNap server to use can be a bit daunting. Each server is a separate fiefdom, and the only way to figure out which one might have the music you're looking for is to pick a few and search.

WinMX: One of the biggest problems with OpenNap applications is trying to decide which servers to search on. WinMX solves that problem by automatically logging you on to a few. If you find others that you want to use, you can add those to your auto-log-on list later. WinMX also offers a wide variety of chat rooms where you can talk to other music fans. Even though the interface is clunky and not all that intuitive, once you learn how to use WinMX, it gets the job done.

Proprietary music download services

A few of the applications we looked at use neither Gnutella nor OpenNap as their basis. These tools have been created from the ground up to work only with their own service. As a result, they might perform better, but they're less likely to have as large an audience, which means fewer musical selections available.

Kazaa Media Desktop: Like Napster, Kazaa has its own proprietary network for file sharing, and offers AVI video files as well as music. Unfortunately, the music selection was rather sparse despite a large number of users. The application includes a media player, so you don't have to launch a separate application to listen to the tunes you download or to watch videos. It also includes a file management tool to keep track of all your downloads. Our only beef was that it's hard to tell from the search page if you've begun to download a file.

Aimster: Two things work in Aimster's favor: Files are encrypted (so network administrators can't immediately tell what they are) and it lets you use your AOL Instant Messenger Buddy List to trade files with your friends while you chat. (AOL Time Warner is the parent company of CNN.com.) It also returns search results amazingly fast. But it suffers from a clunky interface that makes it difficult to tell if you're in the search or transfer window. And several of the files we attempted to download failed.

AudioGalaxy: This program uses a Web-based interface along with a "satellite" application on your PC to handle uploads and downloads. The benefit of the satellite applet is that AudioGalaxy can schedule downloads to happen in the background. The service tells you all the songs available, even if the owner is not online at the time. When the file becomes available, AudioGalaxy will download it as long as you leave the satellite application running. But AudioGalaxy might have grown too big too fast: Pages refresh slowly and sometimes not at all.

More on the horizon

While you can find a lot of alternatives available already, more are on the way. Here are two that we think look particularly promising.

Espra: This application uses a file-sharing network known as Freenet to send files over the Net. The one great advantage of Freenet over Gnutella or OpenNap is that file transfers are completely anonymous -- leaving you free from worry about what information a marketing company could be collecting about your music habits.

But the Freenet interface is a nightmare for non-tech heads; if you don't like to use a command-line interface, you won't like Freenet. That could change with the release of Espra. It provides a sleek graphical interface to Freenet. We saw it in a very raw, early form, and we'll keep our eyes on it over the next few months to see if it improves.

BitBop Tuner: The BitBop Tuner isn't a file-sharing program per se, but it can meet your needs for free digital music files. With BitBop, you enter the name of an artist whose songs you'd like to hear. It searches for that name on the hundreds of Net radio stations available. When it finds a song by that artist, it records the stream in its proprietary audio format and saves it to your hard drive.

These files are tethered to your PC, meaning you can't swap them with friends or burn them to a CD, but if you just want a catalog of digital music to listen to while you work, it shows promise. The application is currently in beta testing, and no final release date has been set.