audiogalaxy.com

What does the word galaxy mean to you? To most people, it means a huge area of space occupied by stars and other heavenly bodies held together by strong gravitational forces. To a select few (mostly women), it represents the height of pleasure – a large bar of chocolate to be bought from the nearest shop as often as possible!

What has all this got to do with Audiogalaxy? Well I'll tell you – precisely nothing! But it was ...
...you could draw comparisons, but well – that would just be stupid – the only similarity is that it's huge! Anyway, I'm waffling rubbish here, so I'll get on with it shall I? (crowd breathes sigh of relief)

- What? Who? Why?
Ever since Napster started showing signs of gangrene a while back, I've been on the look for a viable alternative. I've been through quite a few programs, the most well known being Gnutella. However, ... more

What does the word galaxy mean to you? To most people, it means a huge area of space occupied by stars and other heavenly bodies held together by strong gravitational forces. To a select few (mostly women), it represents the height of pleasure – a large bar of chocolate to be bought from the nearest shop as often as possible!

What has all this got to do with Audiogalaxy? Well I'll tell you – precisely nothing! But it was a good way to start my opinion anyway. I suppose you could draw comparisons, but well – that would just be stupid – the only similarity is that it's huge! Anyway, I'm waffling rubbish here, so I'll get on with it shall I? (crowd breathes sigh of relief)

- What? Who? Why?
Ever since Napster started showing signs of gangrene a while back, I've been on the look for a viable alternative. I've been through quite a few programs, the most well known being Gnutella. However, none of them worked all that well (if at all), and certainly didn't come up to the standards that Napster had set. So I carried on squeezing every last drop of bandwidth out of it, but now it's getting quite hard to find what you want, and the amount of files available is less than a fifth of what it was at it's peak. Then I remembered the Audiogalaxy Satellite. I'd tried it before, but couldn't get the signup thing to work. But after being recommended by several members (including the esteemed broksababe :) ), I decided to give it another try – they should have fixed it by now surely?

They had – and now the mechanism works like a dream. Sure, it isn't as slick and pretty as Napster, but it does the job, and now I've got back to the important job of downloading interesting and original music for my aural pleasure! But I'm going on a bit fast here, let me take you back to the beginning…

- In the beginning, there was only darkness…
You see, the important thing to realise is that while Napster was a utility with a web page appended on for the aesthetic value, Audiogalaxy started off as a web page, and the Satellite grew from that. The page itself is something of a cross between Napster and mp3.com – both unsigned bands and 'normal' bands are available for download, as well as some 'miscellaneous' materials, like stand up and things recorded off the TV that you used to get on Napster. You can download some off the site, but the majority come across the Satellite, but more on that later…

- On the site
The site is the base of operations for all Audiogalaxy subsidiaries – that includes the Satellite and the hosted pages on the site itself. So, what is there on it, and what's it all like?

» The front page. The front page has three main sections – 'Featured Artist', 'Featured Department' and 'Today's Showcase'. The first two are self-explanatory. The third is a small feature on some new development in the music world – news hot off the press if you will.

» Search. Stuck at the top of your page at all time is the search bar. This will help you navigate the site, and to search for songs you might want to download. The search is split into two sections – Music Search, for direct download from the site or via the Satellite, and FTP search, which lets you search a variety of FTP servers for the music you're after. Unfortunately, this option is both less extensive, and less reliable, so I tend to stick to the Music Search section.

» Hosting for artists. As I mentioned, this site is half-like mp3.com, and as such they offer hosting space for new artists – 25Mb as I recall – so they can set up their own section of the site to promote their work and publicise their music.

» Genre categories. From the main page you can access separate pages for all different genres – Rock, Country, Electronica – the list goes on. Each genre page has it's own distinctive colour (just in case you're easily confused!), a featured artist, a top 10, recommended artists, new artists and new features, as well as a nice little feature to keep you interested for the moment. It's a good way to find out about new artists if that's what you want to be doing.

» Users section. Here you can search for your friends, see what they have in their favourites list, and even send them a message if you want! Probably underused and a little pointless, but could be handy I suppose.

» Groups section. Promoting the community factor of Audiogalaxy, this allows you to join groups of like-minded people – you can then chat to them and they can put songs in your Satellite queue for you to download if you want to.

» All Artists & All Genres. These are basically A-Z listings, which can be quite handy if you can't *quite* recall what a band you liked were called!

» Feature Archive & the Bulletin Board. These sections give you access to previous features that were hosted on the site, and to a message board to post your comments on a variety of subjects.

- FFS – What IS the Satellite?
OK OK – I've kept you in suspense long enough – time for me to talk about the Satellite. The Satellite is basically an appendage of the Audiogalaxy web site. It is a similar sort of thing to Napster – it allows you to download mp3s from other users so you can listen to them. However, the interface is a lot simpler than Napster, and there's good reasons for this – a) it reduces on CPU usage, and so doesn't slow your computer down and b) most of the stuff you do in Napster is done behind the scenes with the Satellite.

- OK then, so how do I use it?
The first think you'll need to do is download the damn thing! It's currently an 800k download (although future versions may be bigger/smaller), so your 56k modem should handle that quite admirably in a few minutes or so. And if you have a cable modem – pah! I don't deal with upper class types like you ;) Once you've download and installed the software (DON'T select the 'put in Startup folder' option, it'll annoy you after about 5 boots!), start it up. You'll be presented by an intro screen asking you if you're a new or existing user, and after clicking on 'New User' and filling in all the relevant details you'll be ready to go! Now, the Satellite window will pop up, and log you into the site. After selecting where you want your files to be download to/ uploaded from (using the 'Edit Shares' option on the File Menu), you can click the big 'Go!' button and get on your way to downloading fun!

Clicking the 'Go!' button will open a new browser and load up your Audiogalaxy home page. This shows your Satellite 'queue' (files you have already selected for download). Here's where the fun start – type something into the search bar I mentioned earlier, and hit enter. This will now present with a list of files matching your search string – each with a number of bars representing the download speed, an icon representing whether the song is onsite, or available over the satellite, and the name of the song. Clicking on the name of the song will take you to the 'version selection' screen, where you can explicitly specify which available version of the song you want, by length, quality and size. Selecting this and hitting the 'Search' button will set the download in motion. If the song is currently available to download (and it usually is) then it will pop up in Satellite window with information on the download speed and the amount you have currently downloaded. Well done – you've just downloaded your first song using the Satellite!

- Any advanced features around there buddy?
Well, yes, a few at least. Probably the most useful of these is the autoselection procedure – once you've chosen your version, the Satellite picks the fast one for you, so now scrolling down huge lists again! The second most useful would be the Auto-Resume function – if you get disconnected, or the provider of the film goes AWOL, then don't despair! The Satellite will automatically resume with another file of the same version and you'll still get your song! Oh, and another useful option is the 'Bandwidth Throttle' in the options menu – it allows you to change the amount of information coming across your connection that the Satellite is using – i.e. give it more bandwidth and downloads will go faster, but other Net applications will slow down, and vice versa.

- Disadvantages? There must be some surely!
Well – of course there are. They seems to be a much narrower range of material to download off the Satellite – less random comedy stuff like you used to be able to get on Napster. Having said this, I have no way to gauge how much stuff there is available! Another problem is the difficulty in listening to the songs WHILE you're downloading them. With Napster, you could just double-click on them and listen to see whether you were getting the right thing. With the Satellite, you have to copy the file and rename it without the .temp extension before you can listen to it. Another thing that gets to me is that everything is going on behind the scenes, and I have no control over it like I did with Napster. Maybe that's just the megalomaniac in me trying to get out! Finally, and this won't affect as many people, I've had quite some trouble getting it to work with a Windows 98 shared Internet connection. Which is irritating, because it means I can only download after everyone else has gone to bed :P Oh, and it's worth mentioning that once Napster has finally gone (scapegoat as it is), it shouldn't be all that long before the music industry turn their attentions here. Damn them.

- The big finish
So – there's some advantages and some disadvantages with AG Satellite, but there is with everything. It's just important to recognise that it makes an admirable substitute for the late Napster. The backup of a very pretty and comprehensive webpage is a huge bonus, and while I'll miss Napster, this will make an excellent substitute. All hail the new king! (for now at least…)
 

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