Don't panic! Plenty of Napster alternatives out there
By Geoff Martin, posted Feb 27, 2001

By the time you're reading this, the chances are very great indeed that Napster will no longer be up and running, and its 50 million-plus users will be gnashing their teeth, wondering where their next digital music fix is going to be coming from.

But fear not, because as it's been written several million times before in stories about MP3s, "the genie is out of the bottle," and there are plenty of other music-trading services that are vying for your attention, perhaps hoping to be the next target of a pile-on by Metallica, Dr. Dre, and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

The second-most talked about file-trading service, aside from Napster, has been Gnutella, which operates on the same file-sharing principles as Napster, only with no central server controlling the action. In this case, the computers that are running Gnutella make up a virtual network of servers, so as long as the open-source Gnutella software is being circulated, there is no central server for the courts to shut down.

This imperviousness to the long arm of the law is the reason Gnutella has been getting so much press in the past year or so, but what has been holding it back in popularity is that it's not the easiest software to operate. Basically, it can't hold a candle to Napster in the dummy-proof department. Other complaints about Gnutella, aside from the clunky interface, are that the downloads can often come at a turtle's pace, even if you have fast Internet access. The more users that are logged on, the slower the downloads become. On the plus side, it is not simply a music-sharing program -- it can be used to collect any type of file, including graphics, photos, and movies.

The beauty of Gnutella's open-source code is that it can be built upon by anyone enterprising enough to improve it, and several frontrunners have emerged in the category of Gnutella clones in just the past month.

It's still no Napster, but a brand-new music swapping service is called BearShare. It offers the same features of the original Gnutella, but in a much prettier package that should be easier for novices to use.

OpenNap is another open-source project that has been growing in popularity as the prospect of Napster's demise grows more certain. As its name suggests, it is an open-source version of Napster. In essence, it's just Napster with a different name, since it was reverse-engineered from the original Napster software. While Napster runs on about 100 different servers, OpenNap is controlled by about twice as many. However, if Napster's 100 servers are shut down, you can bet that OpenNap's 200 will be the next to go.

Unlike the above services, Audiogalaxy Satellite is a program that, once its small executable is downloaded and installed, gives you access to digital audio files through your browser. And boy, is it easy. If there's one program to watch, or one to pick as the next Public Enemy Number One as defined by RIAA President Hilary Rosen, then Audiogalaxy has to be it.

Among its best features is that it catalogues all of the songs its users have available for sharing. Say you've searched for a particular song; it's not available right now, but somewhere out there, an Audiogalaxy user has it. The next time you're both on at the same time, Audiogalaxy can be configured to start downloading that song automatically, whether you remember searching for it or not. It can also resume broken downloads, which is another big plus.

Finally, if you want to learn more about so-called P2P or Peer-to-Peer software, which includes programs like Napster's and Gnutella's, you should go to Clip2, a Web site that tracks such services and provides a lot of resources on the latest developments in that area of software programming. It also lists several services such as Gnutella and OpenNap, and gives up-to-the minute updates on the number of users on these networks at any given time, and the number of files being shared.

By the time you read this, Napster may be dead, but several others will have risen in its place. If the recording industry thinks it can see the light at the end of the tunnel, it had better prepare for a long battle, because there's still a good-sized freight train headed straight for them.

With that said, if you use any of the above programs to download a slew of MP3s, do your karma a favour and buy an album from one of your favourite artists, or a new one you've discovered through the programs mentioned here. After all, it's not the musicians' fault it's taken the record labels this long to start getting their houses in order.

 

Napster Alternatives Lurking

Viable entities wait to fill the void of free music on the Internet.
Jim Welte 02/06/2001

Outside of a brief spell in July 2000 when an injunction was issued against Napster, the vast array of potential proxies have lurked in the hulking shadow of the music file sharing behemoth. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has yet to render its long-awaited decision on that injunction, but Napster's tactics since then belie any dependence on the court ruling in its favor.

A $50 million loan from Bertelsmann last November and a subsequent promise that a subscription-based version of the software would arrive by July 2001 has kept all eyes on Napster. However, the company's chances of turning its sizable user base into paying customers are dubious at best, say people behind the alternatives that are ready to pounce on a (free) Napster-less world.

"The only people able to get people to pay for content on the Internet right now is the porn industry," says Ian Clarke, a British expatriate programmer who heads the Freenet movement, a decentralized platform onto which specific content-sharing applications can be built. "And I'm not convinced that music will be as easy to sell as pornography, simply because it's already widely available, and there are already some alternatives to Napster."

Clarke released version 0.3.7 of Freenet this week, and hopes to unveil version 0.4 next month with significant improvements in efficiency, security, and ease of use.

Two weeks ago, Florida-based Free Peers released BearShare, a version of Gnutella that is vastly easier to use than its predecessors. If Gnutella were to build a critical mass of users, the record industry's current struggles with the Napster phenomenon would pale in comparison, says Forrester Research analyst Eric Scheirer.

Like Napster, year-old Gnutella facilitates file-sharing but without using centralized servers or databases, and thus it is impossible to trace Gnutella users or shut down the network. Unlike Napster, "Gnutella is being developed by anonymous open source programmers, many located outside the United States, and therefore, has no corporate presence to sue," wrote Scheirer in a brief on the subject last week.

Source: Webnoize

With 3 million users, Gnutella is the most recognized of the file sharing brands behind Napster, but has been saddled with "a bad reputation of being associated with geek-sharing because [it is difficult to use]," says Frank Davis, operations and community director at StarPolish, an artist advocacy site based in New York. "Napster isn't necessarily just the killer software for [peer-to-peer], but it's also just a great brand name that's associated with convenience and ease of use."

Gnutella's anonymity is its greatest strength but could also be its downfall, says Davis. "In order to really make a mass consumer, user-friendly software, you've got to have a company with a team of developers whose job it is to respond to customer needs. If you didn't need a very focused company behind successful products, then Linux would be in everyone's household, and it's not, because Microsoft (MSFT, info)is a focused company, and Napster is the same way."

However, Davis concurs with many in the digital music industry that most Napster users associate the firm with free music, and a large percentage of the 56 million people who have downloaded Napster will flock elsewhere once the service requires a fee.

Increased ease of use and brand recognition make Gnutella the front runner to garner most of that herd. However, Freenet-based applications "will rule all" in the digital music space if you ask Rob Lord, a former product manager at Nullsoft, the America Online (AOL, info) subsidiary through which Gnutella co-creator Justin Frankel released the first version of the software last March. Given the copyright furor over Napster-like products, AOL has cut ties with Gnutella and muzzled Frankel. This division has fragmented the Gnutella community, says Adam Powell, CEO and co-founder of Angry Coffee, a San Francisco-based Internet audio resource center and online community of musicians.

Powell says his firm is sitting on a finished Napster-like application, and is currently in talks "with a major, internationally held corporation" to deploy the software.

Powell's firm is just one of dozens preparing to become the destination for free digital music. Last week, Aimster, which allows users to swap music files through AOL's Instant Messenger software by linking IM to Gnutella, released version 3.0. Gnotella 0.93, a Gnutella derivative, arrived last week as well, with the addition of graphics to illustrate the progress of file transfers and other features as the key add-ons.

New York-based LimeWire recently released a new Gnutella-based application, and lesser known providers such as Imesh, Flycode, and CuteMX also offer free file-sharing applications.

Meanwhile, CenterSpan Communications spent $9 million to acquire the assets of Scour, which before going bankrupt last October ran Scour Exchange, the second-most popular file-sharing service behind Napster. The firm is currently testing its C-star service that lets users access a limited selection of encrypted Windows Media files from a central server and then allows them to freely distribute the files.

Source: Webnoize

"The technology is not that difficult," says Powell, who claims that Angry Coffee's software was built in just one month. "Some people think that Bertelsmann allied themselves with Napster for the technology, and that's just insane. There are almost 30 of these peer-to-peer networks out there, and you haven't heard of most of them because the attention is so focused on Napster, but you can bet that companies like Yahoo!! are waiting to swoop something up if it makes sense."

Napster can still leverage the user base that its competitors are anxiously waiting to cannibalize. But it must pull off the daunting task of convincing the other four major record labels that they would be better off joining the project than spending money on their own distribution efforts, says Davis.

The only service that will be palatable to the labels will be a closed system that doesn't originate from a Bertelsmann-owned property, says Davis. "If they come up with this turnkey solution and license it to Yahoo! (YHOO, info), MSN, AOL, and other major Internet players, then that puts a lot more pressure on the other labels to say we need to play with this."

"But they're really in a tight spot, and the only way out of it is to release a new Napster that works like the current Napster and let everyone have to pay for it," says Powell. "The real money is in giving people what they want, and if they can't do that, then everything falls to pieces and we have another Emusic (EMUS, info)-like situation where nobody's interested in the service and then everybody goes to Gnutella or something else."

 

Napster alternatives

Other song-swapping services for MP3 lovers

By Jim Lynch
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR

 

Oct. 2, 2000 — As the threat of a court-ordered shut down looms over Napster users, many have turned to alternative online song-swapping programs. Some of the other file-sharing technologies are even harder for the record and movie industries to control, because they lack central servers — thus making a lawsuit to shut them down difficult to pursue and nearly impossible to enforce. Here’s a look at some of those services.

 

GNUTELLA

When alternatives to Napster are discussed, the first one that springs to mind is Gnutella. Originally released by Nullsoft, shortly after AOL had acquired it, Gnutella was promptly stopped by AOL executives who realized its potential copyright problems. By that time, however, initial versions had been posted online and the software was soon embraced and enhanced by the open-source programming community. Various versions of Gnutella now exist and tweaks continue to be made to the software.
       What makes Gnutella so insidious in the eyes of the music and film industries is that it is a peer-to-peer file sharing mechanism, meaning that users do not have to access central servers the way they do with Napster. This makes very difficult for the recording industry to find targets for copyright lawsuits. When word got out that Napster was going to be shut down, users flooded Gnutella with download requests, temporarily shutting down the system.

Installing and using Gnutella is fairly simple and straightforward if you’re a computer geek. Newbies might be confused by it and should probably consider an easier program. For the latest versions of the software and for more detailed instructions, visit gnutella.wego.com or About.com’s Gnutella resources page.

 

IMESH

 

iMesh, from iMesh Ltd., is one of the newest file sharing systems. Like Napster you can easily exchange MP3 files, plus you can also exchange software, video and image files. And iMesh is very easy for novice users to get used to. Imesh’s interface is straightforward and simple.
       On the down side, iMesh simply doesn’t have as many users as Napster and Gnutella, so the file selection can be somewhat limited in comparison. However, iMesh’s user base has been expanding considerably as users search for alternatives to Napster, so file selection is bound to get better and better. This one is highly recommended for file sharing newbies that want more than just MP3 files.
       Find out more and get the software at imesh.com.

 

 

AIMSTER
       What do you get when you cross instant messaging and file sharing? You get Aimster, one of the first next-generation file sharing services. Aimster combines the file sharing capabilities of Gnutella with the most popular instant messaging software, AOL Instant Messenger. Aimster makes it easy for AIM users to exchange any kind of files with one another, including software, videos and MP3s.
       While Aimster started out allowing access solely to the Gnutella network, newer versions have added the ability to connect to the popular Napster and Scour Exchange networks. An upcoming version of the software should also work with AOL’s other popular instant messaging program, ICQ.
       Unlike certain other programs such as MSN Messenger, Aimster does not seek to connect users to AOL’s network directly. Instead it simply provides an interface that allows users to search various file-sharing networks. This makes it extremely difficult for AOL to block use of Aimster. Installing and using Aimster is pretty straightforward, even newbies should be able to do it with ease.
       Aimster is available at aimster.com.

 

 

 

FREENET
       Freenet, currently still in development, is a peer-to-peer file sharing service that was originally conceived by Ian Clarke. Like Gnutella, Freenet operates in a decentralized manner and provides users with relative anonymity. There are no central servers that can be shut down. Freenet also promises to make it much more difficult to forcibly remove a piece information from the network.

 

Freenet uses intelligent routing and caching — allowing it to be more efficient and scalable than Gnutella. In practical terms it means that Freenet should route requests more efficiently, mirror popular data automatically and should make flooding of the network nearly impossible. To find out more about it, visit the official Freenet site at freenet.sourceforge.net.
       
       So remember that even if Napster is eventually killed by the recording industry lawsuit, there are numerous alternatives already available. File-sharing didn’t begin with Napster and it definitely won’t end with Napster. It has already become the online Hydra — cut off one head and another will immediately grow to replace it.