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And Limewire. I remember using Limewire to pirate Limewire Pro



On Windows, Audiogalaxy.

And on Mac, Poisoned! With support for FastTrack (Kazaa), Gnutella (Limewire), OpenFT, OpenNap, and eMule.

But dial-up was too slow, so it was usually quicker to repair a friend's iPod and make a backup using iPodRip or Senuti.


I think audiogalaxy was the real pioneer in p2p. Audiogalaxy satellite, IIRC, ran an ftp server on your machine while at the same time indexed your files and sent the list to audiogalaxy, the web service. From there, anyone could search for mp3 and download from users currently on-line. It was the begining.

It soon became very clear the problems of centralization for this purpose, decentralized networks thrived. Most proprietary implementation eventually died. The open ones, emule and gnutella2, although a small shadow of what they were, are still alive.

In the meantime bittorrent evolved and the industry had to bow to streaming services.

But, if anyone still wants to "fell the napster taste", the closest I know today is soulseek. There's a good client, called nicotine+, that works very well last time I tried.


Audiogalaxy felt magical to use at the time. Being able to leave the Satellite running at home, queue up songs to download from school via the web site, and listen to them by the time you're back home, was... incredible. There was truly nothing like it back then.

It also had a much larger indie community than Napster. I discovered so much good music on Ag that I still listen today.


I remember Audiogalaxy, but cannot remember if it was before, after or basically concurrent with Napster..? Guess couldn’t have been before because Napster was the first right?


Archive.org earliest reference I could find to audiogalaxy satellite is from august 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20000815233144/http://www.audiog...

While napster's from 1999: https://web.archive.org/web/20000815233144/http://www.audiog...

So, I think you're right. Strangely wikipedia agrees with my first thought... Maybe someone should fix it.

EDIT: audiogalaxy satellite came after napster, but audiogalaxy had a mp3 since at least may 1999.


Almost the same time, Napster was slightly earlier, at least in adoption for me and my friends. Audiogalaxy was better but didn't catch on as much, that's when things really started fracturing.


I used napster in junior college and audiogalaxy at my 4-year, so at least for me, Napster was first, but there was some time when both were around and usable.


Last I checked Soulseek was still operating.

Not just that, but I've gotten back into IRC recently and there are still channels out there where you can still get individual tracks with CTCP.


It only just now occurs to me that Senuti is iTunes backwards.


Audiogalaxy had a Linux server as well, IIRC. And it preferred transfers from nearby networks (assuming they were numbered contiguously anyway), which was nice for popular stuff so it wouldn't clog external connections in dorms. Also nice that it showed you all the different versions so you could get both versions when bands made a shame on you release.




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