File Sharing and Music Downloading in 2020

Well taking on the Coronavirus / COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020 meant cancelling alot of non-essential services such as Spotify, Apple Music and god knows whatever other service is being offered for $12 a month or less....

I was one of those who had to cancel everything for the sake of maintaining after a layoff in april. Had no idea what I was going to do. Missed music, streaming shows, etc. But I found that LimeWire isn't entirely dead after all. In fact it made a comeback... but in a different form. 

There are a small handful of p2p (Peer-to-Peer) projects that are alive and well to this day that stayed very active through the 2010's 

Shareaza: 

Shareaza is a p2p Software Project for Windows (7/8/10) originally launched in 2004. It had a hard time competing with the more superior clients available at the time such as LimeWire, Kaza and BearShare.  

Shareaza is capable of harnessing the power of 4 networks. Gnutella (Limewire, Bearshare), Gnutella-2 (Shareaza's flagship network), Edonkey (remember that one?) and DC++ (DC isn't worth a fuck to be honest , so I don't bother :) )



Emule: 

Emule is still a very active client, even in 2020. The network has stayed alive and well but mainly in countries outside the United States where services such as Netflix, Hulu and Spotify are not legal. It remains running off the same Edonkey2000 network that was created in 2001 by whoever the hell created Edonkey (I didn't retain my ED info plz excuse me). The trick to Emule is to run an updated server list after installing the client software to your computer and connecting to Edonkey Server no.1 to get the best results. The network is mainly clear of spam and fake files. 



Soulseek:

Soulseek is a forgotten treasure that not many people have heard of. 

Starting as a dating site in the early 2000's gave music sharing a new meaning. 

The client connects to private servers and depends on single users to be able to upload/download files 1-2 at a time. There is no multi-source downloading but in my experience, that doesn't play much of a role in the downloading experience as much as it would have when I was on dial up back in 2006. 

It's not "feature rich" with a media player or library but with most of us having iTunes installed on our computers these days, who really needs all that right? 

The program makes up for it's lack of features with it's lightweight design and strong connections.