Official Ares Free Download

Remember when we told you about a new filesharing service called Omemo? Back when we first broke news of the service, it was still so new that we hadn’t had a chance to analyze it. We’ve had Omemo running for a few days now and think it’s a fairly exciting and interesting filesharing service, but it isn’t likely to displace established filesharing programs, such as Limewire or Morpheus, just yet.

Installing Omemo was easy enough. After launching the filesharing program, a window opens up in your browser of choice and you can then browse “Audio”, “Video”, “Software”, “Images”, “Documents”, “Miscellaneous”, “Most Popular” and “Newest”. Each category is further divided into sub categories. For “Audio”, you can then browse through music by category and then artist. You cannot, however, browse by artist alone, but there is a search function.

You browse through Omemo files as if you are moving through the folders and files of a hard drive. At the moment, there aren’t too many files that are on the Omemo network. This is because the program is brand new and still in Beta. Omemo is free to use, although there is talk of a subscription fee for ad-free use of the service in the future.

Downloading files is simple enough. You just browse through until you find something you want, then click “Download”, wait and leave feedback.

The only trouble is that it’s unclear exactly how Omemo works. The concept is that you share files by using a portion of your hard drive. You can choose how much of your hard drive you use — the default is 10%. However, we couldn’t work out which part of our hard drive was being used.

Everything is user created, so you can create folders and then upload files for sharing. We uploaded one file into a new folder. It was easy to do, but we’re still unsure if everything on the network needs to be uploaded before it is shared. We also downloaded one file. Again, it was painless.

Omemo is an interesting filesharing service, but it’s unclear how it is any better than Limewire or other filesharing programs, particularly with so few users and a limited range of files on the network. Also, there is no mention of quality control or how the system will cope with corrupt or mislabeled files.

We’ll be keeping an eye on Omemo to see how it improves once it gets passed Beta.

An interesting survey this week takes a snapshot of the filesharing world to find out what the most popular music downloads of 2007 were. With filesharing surging in popularity from one year to the next, what people are downloading is a fairly reliable source of what’s popular, perhaps even more so than the official music charts.

BigChampagne Online Media Measurement is the company that provided the data based solely on P2P filesharing traffic, both legal and otherwise. All major filesharing services were incorporated in the research, including BitTorrent and eDonkey.

So, without further ado, here are the 10 top songs of 2007 according to the world of filesharing:

1. Shop Boyz “Party Like A Rock Star”
2. Akon “I Wanna Luv U”
3. Sean Kingston “Beautiful Girls”
4. Mims “This Is Why I’m Hot”
5. Akon “Don’t Matter”
6. T-Pain “Bartender”
7. Soulja Boy “Crank Dat Soulja Boy”
8. Justin Timberlake “My Love”
9. DJ Unk “Walk It Out”
10. Jim Jones “We Fly High”

What we learn from this is that the majority of people who use filesharing services like Limewire have bad taste in music. Just kidding. It seems that the filesharing networks are dominated by hip hop-crossover songs. Interestingly, none of the artists in the top 10, except for Akon, have done very well this year in terms of CD album sales.

For the top 10 artists in the world of filesharing, album and single downloads were combined.

1. T.I.
2. T-Pain
3. Akon
4. 50 Cent
5. R. Kelly
6. Lil Wayne
7. Justin Timberlake
8. Fergie
9. Ludacris
10. Snoop Dogg

This must surely say something about the age range of the majority of people who use filesharing services. The top 10 artists reads like a hitlist for a teenybopper serial killer.

Next year, we’d like to see filesharing put to better use and used to download better music.

This week saw the launch of Omemo, a brand new filesharing service from filesharing veteran Pablo Soto, the guy who gave the world Blubster and Piolet. Omemo is a P2P filesharing with a difference. It has been set up to create what is allegedly the “world’s largest multimedia library: The Omemo peer-to-peer virtual hard-drive”.

Omemo is open source and works by users allocating a small percentage of their hard drives for the Omemo network. As the number of users increases, so does the size of the virtual hard drive, which Omemo users can then use for filesharing.

Omemo is, allegedly, completely anonymous and users browse the virtual network when sharing their files. Omemo is a great idea and is currently in Beta. It’s available for free download from the official website. Omemo probably won’t change the world, but it’s a welcome addition to the filesharing world.

The only thing is that Omemo is so new that there is very little information available about exactly how it works or how to use the service. Furthermore, with so few users, there likely won’t be a whole lot of stuff being shared. We’re going to download Omemo and give it a test run — expect a full report in the next few days.

In a country known for its fads that usually spread to the rest of Asia and then on to the West, the Japanese appear to be rather taken by filesharing. In Japan, the number of people using filesharing has jumped 180% in a little over a year, according to a survey analyzing the number of files downloaded.

The number of people in Japan sharing music and movies is at an all-time high. This increase refers to filesharing involving authorized media. In June 2006, the number of Internet users using filesharing with authorized media was 3.6%; in September 2007 the figure leaped to 9.6%.

Audio files are the most common choice of download in Japan, amounting to about 211 file per user. Winny is the most popular filesharing program in Japan, closely followed by Limewire and WinMX. BitTorrent hasn’t quite taken off in Japan, accounting for just 7.4% of all downloads.

The next step for Japan will likely be an explosion in the use of BitTorrent. While the current filesharing programs used in Japan are good, they can’t compare to BitTorrent. All the Japanese need is a little push in the right direction.

A new website resource launched recently, offering Internet users the chance to compare various website offering free music downloads. AnyMusicDownloads.com is completely free to use and gives users the chance to read site reviews and on all of the top services offering free music downloads.

All of the sites reviewed offer legal free music downloads. The reviews are in depth and tell you exactly what each service offers. The only catch with all of these free music downloads is that none of them are completely free — the sites are all based on subscription fees.

Initially, AnyMusicDownloads.com looks like a great resource for free music downloads, but it falls short of offering what some users might expect and what they can get by using P2P filesharing sites like Morpheus and Limewire.

AnyMusicDownloads.com is a great idea that doesn’t quite live up to the expectations we had. However, for a round up of paid-subscription-music-download sites, it does a great job.

We weren’t able to ascertain exactly how much each subscription fee was so it’s difficult to compare the services to similar, paid filesharing programs.

The services all offer free trials and money-back guarantees, so you can at least test run where you get you free music downloads from.

Welcome to the neighborhood, AnyMusicDownloads.com

A long-running dispute between Universal and XM over XM’s digital music player and recorder has finally been settled out of court. It is sometimes understandable why record labels go after companies offering dubious free music, but this one really pushed it.

XM’s Pioneer Inno portable music player allows user to record songs onto the device for use at another time. Universal argued that XM’s licensing agreement the recording or reproduction of copyrighted material, much like a cassette recorder, CD burner or software like Cool Edit.

The player gives users the ability to get free music by recording songs, but Universal was having none of it. What’s next? Cases against all devices that can record sound? Sometimes record labels go too far in their bid to eliminate people getting free music.

Universal and XM have now agreed to offer “a new and exciting opportunity for music lovers around the world to discover and enjoy our content”. The details of the settlement have not been made available to the public yet. Chances are, you’ll still be able to record free music, but Universal will somehow get its cut too.

50 Cent, one of the world’s most popular hip hop acts, has said that record companies need to move with the time and recognize that filesharing is here to stay and that this is not a bad thing for artists.

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that filesharing doesn’t hurt artists,” said Fiddy.

Say what you want about 50 Cent, but here is a major star who appears to be astutely more aware of the state of the music industry than most major record labels. While record labels continue to attack people who indulge in filesharing and bring them to “justice”, yet another high-profile artist is speaking out in favor of filesharing.

50 Cent continued by saying that the music industry must concentrate its efforts on maximizing potential revenue from merchandising and concert sales, rather than wasting its resources in a futile battle against the millions of people out there who use file sharing services like Limewire.

“It is the only way they can get their marketing money back,” he added.

50 Cent also lashed out against the way many record labels have jumped on the ring-tones bandwagon. It’s difficult to assess the impact that a statement like this can have, but it sends out a clear message to 50 Cent’s fans that file sharing is justifiable — and there are a lot of 50 Cent fans out there.

We like to keep things simple, so when we learned about a new file sharing service called drop.io, we went straight to check it out. Drop.io isn’t a file sharing program like Limewire or Ares, but it is a convenient and easily-accessible website where users can share files and information without having to even sign up for an account.

You don’t need to log in to start file sharing — just head to website, name your “drop”, set how long it will stay online and select your privacy options. It’s a form of file sharing that can be extremely useful.

Files can be shared with a select few people or left open to the public. Once you’ve uploaded your file, you get a unique URL that you can then use to share your files with other people.

This is another side of file sharing that doesn’t get as much publicity as services like Limewire and Morpheus. There is a common misconception that all file sharing is illegal and all file sharing is bad, but there is more to it than mere music downloads.

Topman stepped up this week as the latest major companies to offer free music downloads to its customers. Following hot in the footsteps of the likes of Pepsi, Topman customers in the UK will be able to download free music albums whenever they spend £60 online.

Specializing in men’s fashion, Topman is looking to capitalize on the popularity of free music downloads. Music fans will be able to choose from a range of hip artists currently in vogue, including the likes of the Rumble Strips and the Klaxons.

Classic albums from bands suck as the Rolling Stones, the Kaiser Chiefs, the Hives, the Cure, Paul Weller, the Jam and Nirvana will be available for free download.

Topman customers will be able to custom-make an album of 10 tracks for their free downloads, creating their own mix compilations. If you’re in the UK and want to take advantage of this offer, you only have until the end of December to get shopping and claim your free music downloads.

Big news for mobile-music fans: Nokia and Universal have teamed up to offer free music downloads to owners of certain Nokia handsets.

While Ares is still tops for music downloads among computer users, the market for mobile music downloads is still wide open.
In what many are calling a major step in the evolution of cellphones into mobile media devices, Nokia users will soon be able to download music for free to be used for up to 12 months.

Universal is also set to permit Nokia users to download songs to phones or computers through mobile or fixed-line Internet connections. Nokia users will pay a subscription fee allowing them to download DRM-free tunes that can be kept beyond the 12-month subscription limit. Universal will, of course, get a share of the cut, with a percentage of revenue from the handsets going to the music giant.

The service is expected to become available some time in the second half of 2008 and other major record companies may follow suit and also join up with Nokia, according to reports.

Are we about to witness a mobile-music revolution? at least this shows that the music industry is starting to move with the times and companies are seeing that people want music downloads, as Pepsi did with its free music download proposal recently.