Official Ares Free Download

Here’s a great idea that will never take off: An anti-copyright campaigner has come out to suggest that people who engage in filesharing should be paid for their efforts. At face value, it sounds ridiculous, but the reasoning behind this filesharing concept has some logic to it.

Rob Myers was quoted as saying that studies have shown that people who use filesharing services actually spurn CD sales to increase. These same people should, according to Myers, try to recover promotional costs from the music biz.

A copyright consultant, Edward Barrow, then said that music industry should try to harness business models that pay commission to filesharing peeps.

Feargal “Teenage Kicks” Sharkey, who is now chairman of British Music Rights, said the idea of paying filesharing people is “fantastic”.

But who will come up with the money? he asked. Feargal seems to think the idea is hilarious. “Bless them,” he said, laughing.

We won’t hold our breath to be paid for filesharing, but it’s a nice idea.

As consumers, we all acquired more music than ever last year. That’s great for us, but, predictably, it sucks for the music industry because in the advent of free music downloads, filesharing and cheap legal music downloads, we’re actually spending less now than we were before.

Ultimately, we are the ones who are benefiting because we are getting more music and spending less money, leaving us free to buy other things, such as beer and peanuts. An increase in legal music downloads last year wasn’t enough to offset the decrease in CD sales.

About 20% of all Internet users, including us, used filesharing programs like Ares or Limewire last year. Hurray for us. Filesharing is also rampant among US teens. What this tells us is that the next generation of bureaucrats are going to be pro-filesharing. Our children will have good times, but they won’t have very big CD collections.

If you aren’t a fan of music downloads yet, it looks like you’re going to have to be soon — or in the next four years at least. A study by Forrester Research Inc. has shown that by 2011, half of all music bought in the US will be music downloads; by 2012, music downloads will surpass CD sales.

Legal MP3 downloads are expected to grow at a rate of about 23% a year over the next five years. With the popularity of filesharing through programs like Limewire continuing to soar and legal music downloads becoming such a hot commodity, CDs sales are going to continue to suffer.

According to the report, this is the “end of the music industry as we know it. This study of music downloads is based on a survey of 5,000 people. It’s certainly not all doom and gloom though, it’s just evidence that the world is changing — and we’re all for change.

The clever folks at consumer-reviews.us recently did a “study” of filesharing programs to figure out which one was fastest for free music downloads. The music download comparisons were performed with a number of top filesharing services, including one of our favorites, Limewire.

The fastest filesharing service is, apparently, MP3 Rocket. The MP3 Rocket filesharing program was released in 2005 and is said to have download speeds 20% faster than other filesharing programs. MP3 Rocket was tested against Limewire, Frostwire and Bearshare. Shame they missed out the major filesharing programs in their study.

MP3 Rocket went head-to-head with popular service Limewire on the same computer. The results were pretty much the same, but MP3 Rocket was a bit faster.

However, MP3 Rocket is still lagging behind services like Ares in terms of popularity and reliability. When choosing a filesharing program to download music with, there are a number of factors you should take into consideration. Yes, even press releases by companies claiming that their product is fastest should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Try programs like Ares out for yourself and then let us know which is best.

This report comes from Slashdot. It looks like MusicStation Max is shaping up to be a hot new music-download service. The idea behind it is that exclusive cellphone handsets from LG will come with subscriptions to this music-download service at no extra charge.

The great thing about these music downloads is that they come with the full support of the big four record labels. The tracks will not be DRM-free, but when you get your music downloads delivered to your cellphone, they’ll also be downloaded to your computer.

The potential impact on mobile music downloads is huge. At the moment, the whole concept of getting music downloads to your cellphone is still in its infancy, but the technology is there that this will be a major industry in the near future. Look out for further announcements to come during the year.

Nokia’s rival service doesn’t look quite as exciting as MusicStation Max.

Music downloads will soon be a very real part of video games, following in the footsteps of revolutionary games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Users will be able to download songs to be played in-game or else just listened to independently.

Major Minor’s Majestic March developer Masaya Matsuura finally caught onto five years ago and came out to state that “maybe soon, CDs will be gone”.

“Everybody will buy the data for the audio by using iPod or something like that,” added Masaya. Well, yes, we agree.

What’s cool is that people will be able to get their legal music downloads and then choose which games to play them with. There may also be a time when games have adverts for songs that can then be downloaded while playing.

This is all great news for fans of video games and music downloads. It makes for yet another way that we will soon be able to get our music.

Although this news doesn’t come as much of a surprise, it’s still interesting to note that almost all filesharing goes on at night. An article on the Times Online states that people who use filesharing programs like Limewire and newcomer Shazzle typically do so when the sun has set.

This would make sense, because during the day, normal people have to go to work, college or school. According to the report, there are more than 900 million illegal music files available for filesharing and 95% of filesharing takes place after dark.

The report also states that eight million people are on filesharing networks at any one time. We’re not sure about that stat; it sounds a little low. It looks like company bosses can breathe easy now, safe in the knowledge that few of their staff are filesharing during work hours.

Now, if only we could find a day job that involved filesharing.

Hot on the heals of the news that the UK will soon implement a law requiring ISPs to ban people using filesharing services to obtain copyrighted material, the ISPs are stepping up and demanding that the record industry underwrites the cost of lawsuits brought up by people wrongly accused of downloading music illegally.

There is some concern that Internet users accused of dodgy filesharing who then turn out to be innocent might get a little pissed off. A document leaked to The Times has confirmed that the British government is going after people who use filesharing services illegally, so there will likely be repercussions.

It will be interesting to see how this British attack on filesharing pans out. What are people’s thoughts on this? If Britain and France lead the way, it’s likely only a matter of time before the rest of Europe follows suit. Makes some of glad that we don’t live in Europe any more.

Former filesharing service Napster is shaping up to be a hot commodity once again with news that it’s Q3 profit deficit is lower the same period a year before. The one-time filesharing giant in Q3, the three months ending December 31 2007, posted losses of $2.8 million, or 6 cents per share. Compare that with the year before when Napster posted losses of $9.5 million and you can see the difference.

Napster attributes its improved financial situation thanks to a 15% increase in revenue from subscriptions. Napster sells access to a monthly-subscription service that allows subscribers to download legal MP3 music that can be played on some digital music players.

Napster’s Q3 revenue was $32.8 million and the service currently has about 743,000 subscribers. Revenue in Q4 is expected to be between $29 million and $31 million, although analysts had predicted $35.2 million.

While things are getting better for Napster and it is doing a roaring trade in legal MP3 downloads, the company is still operating at a loss.

Google is in unchartered territory, being close to a deal that would permit Google to offer free legal MP3 downloads in China. Google will launch a joint venture with Top100.cn, a Chinese website offering legal music downloads.

Three of the four major record labels will be behind this digital music venture, including Universal and, probably, Sony BMG and EMI.

The new service would offer legal MP3 downloads of watermarked files that can be tracked along with the music downloads. Google would be offering a free legal music download service that would be offset by ringtones and concert listings.

There is, as yet, no word on what type of songs will be available for free download.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out, particularly as record labels have been going after Chinese websites, most notably particular Baidu.com, which won a court ruling against it. Record labels are going after Baidu again, thought, this time under a different law.