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As if there weren't already enough P2P applications and torrent search engines out there, an easier method of obtaining music (and other media) has surfaced that is proving to be quite difficult to regulate.

This day in age, it seems most data files that are being transferred daily have become too large to attach to a standard email. Companies such as MediaFire provide a free service which allows registered users to upload file up to the size of 100MB. This 100MB allocation is of course not enough to host full movies, but is indeed adequate for music.

There a few steps you can follow to exploit this loophole and find virtually any album you are looking for:

Google search supports a function called "indexing". The way this work is a user enters specific tag and web address in the search field along with a band name or album title. The search will return pages, from the site specified, that contain the key values submitted. Here is an example:

Let's say you wanted to search for the band "Hum" and their record "You'd Prefer An Astronaut". You would open Google and in the search field first type the tag that will index the site, which is simply, "site:". Next, you would type the site you would like to index; mediafire.com (note there will be NO space between "site:" and "mediafire.com". Finally, you would type in the key words you would like indexed, "Hum You'd Prefer An Astronaut". The final search query would read "site:mediafire.com Hum You'd Prefer An Astronaut". You should then in return be offered a list of links to .ZIP or .RAR files to download. Here is a step by step guide and some search tips:

1.) In the Google search field type: "site:mediafire.com Hum You'd Prefer An Astronaut". (as an example)

2.) Click on any of the links to open the download page. In the download page there are a few things you should look for. Confirm the file size is between 40-100 MB for best quality and confirmation it is the full album. Also, make sure it is a RAR or ZIP file. Sometimes people upload other media such as MP3's.

3.) When you believe you've found what you are looking for, click on "Click here to download", download, and extract the file using an application such as WINRAR (for PC) or StuffIt (for MAC).

Here are some tips and issues you may run into:

• Sometimes the correct file will not be indexed when searching for a "band name" with the "album title". If this happens, try searching using just the band name or just the album name. Users sometimes make the files more difficult to find by naming them shorter titles.

• A good way to find similar music - when you click on the page to download the album, just above the link "Click to download" you will see a user's name and a link to view their public folders. This is very effective when you are trying to obtain complete discographies or rare live bootlegs.

• A good way to find live/bootleg albums is to search for a specific date. Recently, I typed in a date, and stumbled upon 238 live albums of a specific band.

• This indexing technique also works using blogspot.com. Simply replace the "mediafire.com" address with "blogspot.com" and you will receive results with all of the blogs that offer links to download albums. You can index any site you'd like but the 2 mentioned in this post seem to deliver the most successful results.

Remember: You should only download music to preview. I recommend deleting the files and buying the actual record at some point.


Enjoy!