How to download music online

Throughout my time on the Internet, I have had trouble finding good ways to find the music I want to hear. Specifically, not so common albums from not so common bands. In the last 5 years, I’ve got it down. I can find almost any album and get it in less than a day. My first choice is always to purchase it from a store, however living in a small town, it can sometimes be very difficult to find rare albums. In fact, the closest record store is a place called Headstone Records, which is the one and only place to get New Release Vinyls. Other than that, music stores are impossible to find.
So, here it is.

1. My personal favorite is a private music torrent tracker called Waffles. It is by far, and without question the best music tracker I’ve come across, after the unfortunate demise of OiNK.me.uk. Because of this, it is near impossible to get an invites. If you would like one, I currently have a few, and can possibly “hook you up.” However, let me warn you, it is not a leecher friendly place. Keeping a decent ratio is not as easy as just leaving your torrenting application open. In fact, I have had to upload 5 albums just to stay at a 1.00 ratio.
Waffles
Slyck’s BitTorrent Guide

2. The second choice is to scour public FTP servers. Search Warez sites like Wtalk, Needz.org, and the like to find nice ones. If your target album is a more well-known artist, you can probably find it on one of the FTP servers listed here.
Filesearch.ru Top 100 FTP servers

3. Another possible choice is to search on Warez forums. Often, they have “scene” releases of albums. Wtalk has a fantastic audio library. The downside is that most of these albums are hosted on Rapidshare.com, and without a premium account, this can be a hassle.

4. My final choice is to use your ISP’s newsgroups. This is by far the fastest, but unless you are willing to pay for bandwith, you cannot get more than a few gigs a month. Adelphia SoCal and Time Warner both offer 1 gigabyte per month. Slyck.com has a great tutorial for getting started with newsgroups. On Adelphia’s servers, most underground albums were in alt.bin.music, but its likely there were other places that I never found. Recently, Time Warner removed their newsgroup servers, and now require a monthly fee. I have BT, so I had to turn them down.
Slyck’s Newsgroup Guide

Well, that’s my final list. I have found every album I have ever honestly wanted from these places. Remember to support the artist if you like the CD. I’m personally a big opponent of DRM and business practices of the record companies. In my anti-authoritative rage, I have found that many bands have a website with a Paypal “Donate Now” button. This is a fantastic way to skip the middle-man and go straight to the artist.

Also, you may have noticed that I didn’t list Kazaa or Limewire. I have found that P2P networks are among the most dangerous places on the Internet. You can find some unusual things there, and it has the highest probability of downloading a dangerous file, and it is where many of the RIAA cases you hear about on the news begin. I’m not saying that if you use it, you will get a virus or be sued, but why take the risk in the first place? If you must use P2P, I recommend Overnet/Edonkey2000, as I appreciate the ed2k and overnet linking system, as well as the file download verification with my unusual personality as a computer hypochondriac who visits irreputable sites on many occasions (If you catch my drift). But heed my warning, avoid P2P networks if at all possible.

I’ll probably go into more depth with these in the future.