Audiogalaxy 2.0 launches in beta after 8-year dormancy

Audiogalaxy is back. But it's not the same service you knew a decade ago.

Audiogalaxy was one of the most elegant peer-to-peer filesharing services of the early 2000's, pairing a robust P2P client with a Web-based search and indexing system that made Napster look sloppy by comparison.

After Napster came under legal fire from the RIAA in 2000, Audiogalaxy picked up a sizeable chunk of the service's defectors. In 2001 alone, the Audiogalaxy client was downloaded more than 30 million times.

Unfortunately, like many promising P2P services from that era, it was quickly sued out of existence. The RIAA sued Audiogalaxy for 476 counts of copyright infringement in 2002.

"I shut Audiogalaxy down from my apartment on the afternoon of June 17, 2002," Audiogalaxy designer and engineer Tom Kleinpeter wrote in 2008. "It was a beautiful, typical Austin summer day. I knew what was coming, so I had stayed home to enjoy the sunshine. Mid afternoon, my cell phone rang, and David [McArthur, Audiogalaxy co-founder] gave me the word to shut it down."

Eight years later, Audiogalaxy 2.0 has launched in beta. But rather than using the P2P model, it now uses the "slinging" model. That is, with the Audiogalaxy client on your always-on home PC, you can make your music available on your smartphone, tablet, or remote PC.

"If we had our way, unfettered, DRM-free file-sharing would be back because we know what music lovers want: a celestial jukebox that includes released music, live tracks, mixes, and all the other funky bits of musical inspiration from mainstream artists to backyard bands," Audiogalaxy founder Michael Merhej said this week. "Unfortunately, nobody can offer this experience today because it is next to impossible in the current copyright environment."

Audiogalaxy is currently free to sign up and download, and your library of music can be played on remote PCs, and iOS and Android mobile devices.