To the average downloading public, the recent news about LimeWire being forced to shut down sounds pretty ominous. At my day job, I've already been asked "How do I download songs now?" While LimeWire shutting down is bad news for its users, there's a silver lining to this cloud.
The Gnutella network did not get shut down -- the actual songs you were downloading came from the Gnutella network, not directly from LimeWire. LimeWire merely found the songs on the network and then downloaded them.
LimeWire is open source software -- this means any developer with the know-how could download the LimeWire program code and modify it and release his or her own version of LimeWire.
So, how do you download songs now? Easy -- just replace LimeWire with an alternative program which can download from the Gnutella network and you're good to go!
Frostwire
In case you didn't guess from the name, FrostWire is about as close as you can get to the original LimeWire experience. The program is pretty much LimeWire minus some of the annoyances -- like the "upgrade to pro" nag screens. Some Gnutella programs don't compare to LimeWire for searching or download speed, but FrostWire is one of the best -- which makes sense, since it's built on the same source code.
As a bonus, FrostWire is also available for your Android phone.
Watch out for the Ask toolbar during install -- just uncheck all the boxes if you don't want it.
Download FrostWire for Windows, Mac, or Linux
