As I mentioned a day or so ago, I have been playing with AcquisitionX, a P2P client. [disclaimer]I have downloaded some tracks that I bought but have yet to receive from Amazon[/disclaimer], and looked around to see what else there is.
What frustrates me about this is how crummy the metadata is, how hard it is to know what it is you’re getting. I guess if the cost approaches zero, you decide or add the value, but I thought most people used applications that handled track names, album and artist details, etc. Apparently not. And don’t get me started on the bit rates . . .
It does cast some doubts on the P2P nets as some great goldmine of easily accessible media. It’s not like it’s easy to find a good quality file with coherent ID3 tags. And from what I can gather, the online collections I am finding are not assembled by completists: it’s like a colossal greatest hits collection. Perhaps it’s a limitation of the networks AcquisitionX uses: the Donkey/Mule networks offered a wider array of stuff, but actually getting it seemed to take forever. I thought coming late to the P2P party would mean I would skip a lot of this teething trouble . . .
Now playing: King Crimson: The Talking Drum (Live) from the album “Frame By Frame [4 – 1969 (Live)]” | Buy it