Replacing Napster

[vsp]

Ever since Napster went belly-up, I've looked around once in a while for a substantial replacement for it.

My requirements are simple:

* The focus is on MUSIC. It can carry file formats besides .MP3, but all of the available bandwidth shouldn't be chewed up by 3,485 Swedish titty flicks, 1,118 DivX copies of the new Harry Potter movie and 7,748 intentionally-misnamed house-ad MPEGs for generic porn sites.

* The interface needs to be simple enough for a rank amateur to grasp, but have some advanced features for those who want to do more than type in a Search box.

* It needs a HIGH SUCCESS RATE. This means that (a) a lot of people need to be using it, (b) they need to share a lot of files, so that you have a decent chance of finding something other than Britney Spears MP3s, and (c) more often than not, if you're looking for something reasonably common, _someone_ will have it available for download at faster than 0.04 kb/sec without leaving you on a six-hour queue.

And the winner is... WinMX. I tried out v3.31 at a friend's recommendation this weekend on my DSL connection, and there goes the neighborhood, my bandwidth and my free time. It's got a Napster-on-Steroids interface with some intelligent search options, a solid userbase, good search speeds, decent download times, and I'm having a blast just playing "Stump the Band" to search for artists that I _can't_ find anything for. So far, I've had to go to the likes of the Roadducks to reach that level of obscurity.

Bill Hicks live shows (outside of the recent Ryko releases), European versions of albums, Japanese ska, bootlegs, oddities... oh yeah. If I'm not back in a month, forward my mail.