I genuinely want to become a big-time music pirate. I just suck at it.

Surely some of you have got some tips for me. What peer-to-peer clients do you use? Any paid services? Search strategies? Best hours to go online? Better luck with certain types of music?

Later we'll talk about the ethics, but now let's talk about the mechanics. If I wantedto steal music like a 15-year old with no paper route, how should I proceed?

get yourself an ipod and use itunes.

I've got both already. Great for copying music I already own (or borrowed CDs from friends.) And great for 99¢ downloads (from a limited track selection.)

But today I want to talk free and unfettered downloads.

Anyone?

I'm using DC++ (a Directconnect client), and Soulseek almost exclusively, I can find anything I want with either, usually pretty fast. For a mere $5 a month, you can get "privileges" that push you to the front of the Soulseek queues, it's pretty great.

i use acquisition for mac osx. i guess the dearth of file-sharing clients for the mac keeps me from being able to compare lots of systems, but acquisition seems to find a lot of files. it definitely depends what time of the day you use it, but i don't pirate often enough to make bar graphs or anything analyzing peak file-sharing times of the week. for me it's mostly hit or miss.