Unfortunately, the online mp3 world has fallen into the habit of comparing everything to the original file sharing giant Napster. But, since Napster stole the online world's attention, and has held it ever since, I apologize for knowing no better way to review Audiogalaxy.

As a veteran of this service (having used the beta for over a year), I have gone through it's evolution alongside the evolution of services like Napster and Scour. My overall conclusion is that Audiogalaxy is superior to all of these services, and is far easier and more convenient for all varieties of users.

I'd like to try to present both the nerdly and common perspectives on audiogalaxy. Therefore, I will try to first present what I like about audiogalaxy's features, and then go a little farther in depth.

The first aspect of audiogalaxy that sets it apart from services like Napster or Scour Exchange is that it is web based. While you download a "client" like Napster or Scour Exchange, it is much smaller and much faster, and actually does very little.

Audiogalaxy does not include news, chat, special features, or any community features. This makes the program smaller and faster. Audiogalaxy's downloadable program simply logs you in to their service and downloads the files. Both of these operations are transparent, meaning that once they are set up, they require no user participation.

Audiogalaxy's strength lies in it's web interface. In other words, searching for and downloading mp3s is done on a web page that is instantly familiar to anyone who is used to searching for web pages with a portal like yahoo, excite, or metacrawler.

When a user locates a desired mp3, they simply highlight an icon next to the song they want, and send it to the queue. The client then *automatically* finds the fastest transfer for your internet connection type and downloads it. No more do you have to worry about searching for a file in Napster or Scour, then trying 14 different copies of the file for one that works, and at a decent speed. Audiogalaxy does this for you.

And, just like Napster or Scour, you can play the song off audiogalaxy's web page once you have downloaded it. Other nice features are that audiogalaxy will list links to artists that people who downloaded the song you are looking at also downloaded, as well as allowing users to post comments on whether or not they enjoyed the song you are looking at.

For users who prefer the type of file selection control you have with Napster or Scour, Audiogalaxy allows you to look at all online copies of the file you want and choose a server. In addition, audiogalaxy lists the possibility that a file will be online at any given time.

All in all, audiogalaxy is perfect for anyone who wants to just search for a file and get it, without any hassles, with the highest possible speed, and the highest possible success rate. While it may not be complicated enough for the power hacker, it is unmatched in shear ease of use and efficiency. I highly recommend anyone with a hankering for mp3s give audiogalaxy a try. It will only take about 200k of your hard drive, so you can't go wrong.



Recommended: Yes