Cant get limewire to download to my pooter for sum reason and i tried bittorrent and it seemed shite so what are peoples suggestions for downloading music?
I have an iMac with os x 10.5.5 incase it matters.

itunes..... all nice and legal......

failing that, piratebay for your torrents and then bitlord/torrent to download them

Yeah, im not really into paying for music. And im a bit dim but do i need one thing to find a torrent for the track/album i want then another to download it?

Yep.... theres mininova, piratebay, erm, and lots of others I can't remember now.... search for the torrent on these, click download and your download program of choice should pop up and start downloading it.... I use bittorrent and its pretty darned quick.

dude torrents are the best and you dont have to bother with downloading individual tracks and can get whole albums. If you can find someone willing to part with invite only music torrent sites that sprouted in the wake of oink then youre golden.

otherwise use sites like mininova and demonoid.

Ah ok, i downloaded bittorrent then searched in it for music n there seemed to be bugger all.
At least i think thats what i did.

Ok i downloaded bittorrent again n then went to mininova and searched for some music, clicked "download this torrent" which opened up the wee "downloads" window and the torrent was in there but it was a tiny file compared to what mininova said the size was so i right clicked and selected "open" and "opera" opened up which seems to be a download thing like bittorrent right? I never downloaded opera though, is this the default service that mininova uses or what? and if its gonna use opera then do i need bittorrent?

Azureus is good, then isoHunt.com

This months xkcd explains this well.

http://xkcd.com/488/

I think everyone should pay for some/most music to keep bands alive.... I know lots get paid shed loads of money but its good to fund new talent coming through... imo

I only download music from bands which i consider to be "big".
I have a lot of friends in bands in their spare time and am more than happy to pay for their albums/eps etc.
I also like buying cds, i have far more cds on my shelves than i have albums in my computer but if im going to pay for music i want an actual cd and cover/artwork etc to show for it.

Buy a fucking CD then, if the important part is the plastic and cardboard.

Aye, i might do but unfortunatly i don't have the money to go "oh i liked that song i just listened to on kerrang/scuzz/mtv whatever so il just go out n buy an album" to then find out that the band are gash so il download some tracks listen to them for a bit n if i like them then go and buy the album.

fair point.

what you need, then, is a website that offers yo the chance to preview the songs before you buy.

like :

itunes
bleep.com
beatport

etc
etc
etc
etc

ok, bit of advertising:
legal free downloads at We7.

www.we7.com

go there use it.

+ previews, all major labels have been signed new music being added all the time.

+1

or just buy one or two songs off ___(insert music store of preference).

itunes' ratings actually tend to be pretty accurate, or at least fairly representative, even with much smaller bands.

Opera has bittorent built into it.

Try out lastfm. I actually have the player installed and I am constantly streaming off of them.

Utorrent is a much better torrent host the Azureus. less crap.

you might need to change your default bittorent client to whatever it is youre using. Im on a mac and I use transmission.

+1 for last.fm

+1 for downloading music until you know its good and then going out and buying the album.

rapidshare and megaupload! just google the band name then rapidshare and you should find the link
also for movies www.ninjavideo.net

album wash, faster than torrents. You can only do a few an hour but an album takes minutes

[Thread Déjà vu] .... [/Thread Déjà vu]

I go to justmusicstore.com. No idea of the legality of it but found while trying to DL artists not on itunes and they got a huge selection, including loads of dance stuff recorded off vinyl and it's about 15 cents a song

avoid any store that uses DRM like the plague.

play.com just launched an mp3 store, but the quality is only 192kbps, which is fucking insulting.
itunes has some DRM-free music, but you pay extra.

IMHO it's not worth paying for music downloads until some clever fucker launches a store that sells DRM-free tracks encoded in FLAC with a decent selection. until then digital downloads are not worth paying for. buy the CD if the music is worth paying for.

+1 more for last.fm

because of course you can hear the difference between 192 and 16/44.1 , can't you?

Bleep sell FLAC, but i just can't see the point, other than to use loads of space on your hard drive. IMO ( which includes very well trained professional ears), MP3/AAC is just fine.

looking for old school tunes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VasAX...eature=related

rip youtube

Google Blog Search
Megaupload/Rapidshare or whichever you prefer
Download into WinRar or similar unzipping program
add files to Itunes or similar.

I swear by that method. keeps my system clean unlike torrenting/limewire.
also people put together great compilation albums.

I use limewire to download and itunes to play.

I actually bought a fair amount of tunes from the itunes store and have since discovered that the AAC file format they come with is incompatible with any of the Dj software I use. Traktor, Djay etc.

pile of arse, with itunes 8 you cant even burn protected files to a CD in order to convert them to mp3. Bloody useless.

err, yeah I can hear the difference between 192 and FLAC, actually. especially through my external DAC and amp to headphones. speakers, not as much.

i think AAC at 320 is fine, but if i'm buying music i want it to be good enough quality that I can archive it and not be able to hear the difference between it and a CD, on any future system I may one day be able to afford.

for legal downloads, i like emusic. they have lots of stuff that i look for.