AudioGalaxy

I just revisted AudioGalaxy, and it has pulled into the lead. It is now my favorite MP3 sharing program because of the selection of music on there. Songs you can't find on any of these other programs, AudioGalaxy has... and multiple places to get them from. The queue system and the way you can set up the AudioGalaxy satellite to download things once they become online is what I believe has made AudioGalaxy grow so much, and especially in the rare music arena! If you're looking for songs that you can't seem to find anywhere else, I suggest giving this a whirl! Here's my old review: AudioGalaxy is a weird idea. All the searching is done through the AudioGalaxy website. You need to download the "AudioGalaxy Satellite" which does the downloading and uploading... it's like a two piece system. In my experience with this program, it has been very slow and everyone always seemed to be downloading from me constantly, and I don't like that. You can only search for mp3s with this service, and the record industry is all over them... so, they'll probably install filters or be shut down.

XoloX

I just heard about this program from Zeropaid.com. To tell you the truth, I wasn't too enthusiastic at checking it out... I was just about ready to give up on these newer programs. XoLoX, however, is just what I needed. This is another Gnutella client, but the goal of the people making it was to create a small and simple Gnutella client that made downloading from the Gnutella network a breeze. To my knowledge, this is the first Gnutella client with a segment downloading feature like Morpheus has, so you can download a file from multiple people at the same time making downloads much faster. It also has a real nifty feature where you can set the upload bandwidth limit to automatically go to maximum if your computer hasn't been used for 15min. This is soooo nice! Lots of content on here too, since it uses Gnutella.

LimeWire

LimeWire has turned to crap. It always has run kinda slow on my computer, but I looked past that since it had such cool features, but apparently the people making LimeWire no longer want a reputation of excellence, because each new version I download is worse than the one before it... they slow down my computer like hell, even after I close the program. They keep adding useless features and taking away things that were helpful before. Don't bother with LimeWire til they get their act together.

BearShare

This is a lot like LimeWire, only it's missing some of the key features, it doesn't look as cool, and I heard it has spyware in it. It can search for all files types also, and it uses the Gnutella network.

Morpheus

MusicCity used to be the most popular network of OpenNap servers, then they shut down their Napster servers and came out with this. Morpheus is a clone of KaZaA with a cooler name... basically. It's fast, and it can search for all file types. It gives me problems when I have lots of stuff open at once though. This program is fortified with Flash, and it eats up memory like Pac-Man.

KaZaA

Same thing as Morpheus, only this came first. It works good, but I wouldn't expect either this program or Morpheus to stay around very long... at least not with the content that it has now. Since both KaZaA and Morpheus use a central server they are huge targets for lawsuits and will probably be forced to filter their content or shut down completely.

WinMX

I used this program all the time once Napster sold out. It used to be the premiere program for connecting to a boatload of OpenNap servers, all at the same time. Once Napster installed filters, everyone flocked to these OpenNap servers and they became crowded and it was nearly impossible to connect to them. I stopped using WinMX because I could never get connected to any significant amount of servers. But since then, they have added a new feature to it that works kinda like Gnutella... I think. You can search for all file types with this too.

Napster

What can I say that you don't already know? This is the program that pulled the cat outta the bag and pissed off all the record companies. It used to be a cool program, but there was no way that it was gonna last the way they tried to have it. You can't build a business out of piracy, it was a mistake to think they could. If you're making money from stealing you're gonna get hammered hard, and that's exactly what happened. Napster was forced to install filters, and it's popularity slipped into the gutters.

eDonkey2000

This program isn't very popular, but it blew me away when I first tried it. When you download something that's on the server you are on, it will simultaneously download it from everyone on the server that's sharing that same file... so you take the speed of all those people that have the file you're downloading, and add them together, and that's how fast it goes. It works like a dream. The only problem is, it's real hard to get connected to a server because it doesn't seem to have any good sized servers to begin with. eDonkey2000 has some major potential though. You can search for all file types with this program.

iMesh

This one is very popular, I think, but I've had less than satisfying results with it. I don't know if something was wrong with the network each time I tried it, but I never got any results when I searched for something, it said the network was busy and to try again later... that's no good! You can search for all file types with this program, and I think it can download from multiple locations at the same time, like eDonkey2000.