Beats Napster hands down (audiogalaxy.com in general)

Member Name: Stalin

Product:	audiogalaxy.com in general
Date:	11/10/01 (37 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Focusses on music, innovative file searches, fast and resumable downloads

Disadvantages: Strange file naming scheme, service is very busy in evenings

With the Napster file sharing network now so heavily restricted, many have been on the search for an alternative. And there has been no shortage of alternatives either. Audiogalaxy is one of these, and in my opinion it is one of the best. Let me expand on that.

Audiogalaxy distinguishes itself from the competition in a number of ways. Whilst most other networks allow you to share any type of file, Audiogalaxy - as the name suggests - only allows the sharing of audio files. This may seem like a disadvantage at first, but in fact it means that it can specialise in this area particularly well. The other difference is that rather than just allow the user to search the files of those other users that are currently online, you can actually search files who?s users are offline. This gives you a much greater choice of files, which is particularly handy when trying to find more obscure files. If you try to download a file when its owner is offline, it is simply queued until they come online.

The process of finding a file is as simple as it should be. Type the track/artist name and click search. The results are then displayed, but rather cleverly. Rather than simply listing many of the same files many times, similar files are replaced by a single entry. Upon clicking this entry, you are prompted to select a bitrate. The program then selects among the available files to find the one that is likely to download the fastest. This means that you generally get very speedy downloads, which is often a problem with peer to peer networks. Better yet, if you get disconnected from the network whilst downloading, the download will resume upon reconnecting - even if the user you started the download with is no longer available!

The process of sharing your files is slightly rougher. Once you have specified the directories to share, it takes a little time for the system to recognise them. More irritating is the way it names your music. As I have already mentione
d, Audiogalaxy treats your files as music - giving them an artist and track name. How it does this is slightly unclear. It doesn?t use the file?s ID3 tag as you might expect, but uses a combination of the file name and path - initially my files had names like ?Americana Music - Offspring? - strange. In the end I had to rename all my mp3s so that they got represented properly.

All the small irritations mentioned thus far could be overlooked if it were not for this last one - the service becomes unbelievably busy in the evenings. In fact, from around 5pm to the early hours of the next morning, you cannot login at all. Hopefully this is something that will be sorted before long. Audiogalaxy has become my pick of the file sharing bunch. Everything about it is well designed and efficient. It?s just a shame that it only works 12 hours a day.

Summary: