What is the best source of downloadable, free, entire albums? By
'best' I mean, best variety, best reliability, best quality...and if
applicable, I would need a strategy, not just a source. (Meaning that
bad answer="Kazaa," and good answer="Kazaa, by using plug-in X and
configuration Y and search terms A,B,+C"). And I'm not interested in
building albums by finding/downloading each track separately.

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Clarification of Question by stupidsexyflanders-ga on 31 Mar 2003 06:03 PST

I guess I should clarify that I'm based in Sweden, and I'm talking
about downloading only that material that does not violate copyright.
However, I am interested in seeing the biggest variety of material
possible.

Thunks in edfunce-a fur yuoor help und I luuk furverd tu a greet
unsver! Bork Bork Bork!

The best way that I know of is to use a program called BitTorrent at
http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/.

BitTorrent is a new concept in Peer to Peer file sharing. A torrent
can be music, video or programs...any type of digital media. When you
start downloading a torrent, other people can simultaneously start
downloading what you have on your hard drive so far. I've gotten
download speeds of up to 200kbs although my average is probably 30ish.
It varies but very similar to Kazaa. The thing that is great about it
is that files can be sent as a 'set'. That is whole sets of MP3's or
video clips can be sent in one Torrent. Very convenient.

Links to Torrents come and go and are posted at various sites. Here's
a few to get you going:

http://www.bittorrentsites.cjb.net/
http://www.torrentlinks.com/
http://www.suprnova.org/
http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=BitTorrentDownloads

Happy Torrenting!
-shiva777

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Request for Answer Clarification by stupidsexyflanders-ga on 25 Apr 2003 09:02 PDT

Before I rate this answer...I haven't had time to really dig into
this, but I don't see a way to search for a given title -- is the only
way to see "results" to visit people's nodes, browsing what they have,
and dl from that?

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Clarification of Answer by shiva777-ga on 25 Apr 2003 09:46 PDT

There is only one search engine that I have found for Bittorrent sites
although I expect there to be more in the very near future as it gets
more popular:

http://www.watchen.tv/

It is supposed to be for television shows but it indexes music, movies
etc.
I suppose the lack of search engines is a downside to Bittorrent. I
just discovered this program myself recently. I find that it's a lot
faster than many p2p programs and I love the multiple file aspect of
it.

-shiva777

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Clarification of Answer by shiva777-ga on 25 Apr 2003 15:38 PDT

Fair enough. I didn't consider the lack of search capabilities. Really
I was excited when I found a program that could download a whole album
at a time.  It is a pain to get songs one by one and try to put them
together. I have seen torrents that are complete album collections by
a certain artist!
Anyway, I just found a really good collection of torrents that has a
search capability. You may be interested:
http://www.torrentse.cx

Happy Hunting!
-shiva777

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Request for Answer Clarification by stupidsexyflanders-ga on 26 Apr 2003 03:43 PDT

Shiva777, you may want to try KazaaLite++ (www.kazaalite.tk), which
can be configured to run the same search automatically every minute or
so, and returns unlimited results. Search on "albw," come back in 15
minutes, and you'll have hundreds of hits of full CDs. They must be
"unwrapped" with AlbumWrap
(http://www.infamus.com/albumwrap/extractor.html), which is free and
quite easy to use. Problems with Kazaa are the usual: speed and
dropped downloads. Still, quite amazing.

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Clarification of Answer by shiva777-ga on 26 Apr 2003 07:22 PDT

Hey thanks for the tip!  -shiva777

I'm going to have to give this answer a gentleman's C. I have not used
this yet, so I will give quality and reliabilty the benefit of the
doubt, but I was hoping for a source with a lot better variety and a
little easier interface.

I will keep an eye on soulseek and torrentbit, though!

Hi -

Unless the music is freely distributable as stated by the authors,
downloading commercially available albums is illegal.

jbf777-ga
GA Researcher

It's not that simple, whether it's legal or not depends on the country
where you reside, and where the album is released.

I live in Sweden, and here a court decided not to charge a Swedish
minister who said that she had downloaded [copyrighted] mp3s and
burned CDs with those tracks for friends. The reason why the
prosecutor did not charge here, was because he didn't believe it was
an infringement of the Swedish copyright laws, which pretty much says
that it's probably illegal to share music on e.g. Kazaa, but not to
download (to download software is though illegal).

So, since I'm no paid researcher, I guess you'll have to wait for a
good answer from someone else, I just wanted to point out that
jbf777-ga's theory that it's "illegal" isn't universal, but depends on
for example where you reside. If the copyright laws in your country
allow you to use and download mp3s, check out the p2p software
"Soulseek". From that program you can browse different users, and
download an entire folder, containing an album for instance.