Alternatives to Limewire

LimeWire is a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing application that allows its users to download a wide variety of file types including music, videos, photos, and documents. At the same time, however, it is also notorious for causing computers to run slowly and for large amounts of viruses, spyware, and trojans being shared and spread with false file names by its unsuspecting users.

iTunes

As the number one music retailer, the iTunes music store must be doing something right to satisfy music lovers around the world. Almost any song or album you can think of can be found in this vast marketplace from Apple and, although downloads are not free like on LimeWire, everything is reasonably priced with single tracks ranging from $0.99 to $1.29 and full albums available for as low as $6.99 in some cases.
iTunes now also offers users a wide selection of music videos, full-length episodes of TV shows, and movies (which can be purchased or rented). Downloaded music and videos can be transferred to any iPod or iPhone.
The iTunes software application must be downloaded in order to access the iTunes store. This application also serves as a media organizer and media player.

Rhapsody Unlimited

If paying individually for songs and albums is not your thing, then the Unlimited subscription music plan at Rhapsody may be more what you are looking for. With plans starting at $12.99, Rhapsody offers subscribers the ability to play any of the available "6 million-plus tracks" whenever and where ever they want through its Web site. Users can also create and share playlists with friends and burn CDs with the downloadable Rhapsody software. The Rhapsody To-Go subscription plan offers the same features in addition to the ability to download music to a Rhapsody-compatible media player, such as the SanDisk Sansa Fuze and the Sansa Clip.
Rhapsody also offers a free trial of its service, usually 14 days, and users can save money on the monthly cost by paying for a full year of service in advance. Unlike iTunes and LimeWire, however, the Rhapsody service is solely dedicated to offering music.

Napster

The Napster music service, once a free P2P file-sharing program along the lines of LimeWire, is now more akin to a mix between iTunes and Rhapsody, offering users subscription plans starting at $5 per month for five downloads but also unlimited on-demand, streaming music through the web. With this plan, users are basically paying in advance for five songs at $1 per song, similar to iTunes pricing, and also getting web access to the entire available library of music, similar to Rhapsody.
Unlike Rhapsody and iTunes, though, Napster downloaded music can be transferred to almost any mobile media device, including the Zune, iPod, iPhone, MP3 players and music-enabled cell phones. iTunes downloads can only be stored on an iPod or iPhone and Rhapsody downloads can only be stored on one of a handful of Rhapsody-compatible players.

FrostWire

FrostWire is essentially a free, open-source version of LimeWire Pro, the paid-version of LimeWire. The graphical interface even looks just like that of LimeWire. The difference here is that FrostWire is fully open-source and developed by freelance developers around the globe, which means a free community offering help, listening to suggestions, and constantly improving the program.
Be warned, however, that FrostWire does run on the same Gnutella network as LimeWire, which means that the same issues with files containing viruses or other malware exist with files downloaded here. The only solution for this is for users to make sure their computers have anti-virus protection and to be cautious of files whose file size may seem inappropriate for its type of content.

BitTorrent

Though the newer versions of LimeWire now come with built-in BitTorrent support, a larger variety of files can be found when using a stand-alone BitTorrent client -- uTorrent and BitComet are the most popular -- and an online torrent search database such as Mininova.org and Torrentz.com.
Another plus of this alternative method is that most torrent download sites offer users commenting features, and comments can be very useful for determining if a file is really what is says it is, what the quality is like (for video and audio files), or even if the download contains a virus or other malware. Other users are very helpful by providing their own input after downloading files, and this input should be used to your advantage. Always check comments if available, and always try to leave a comment if you have downloaded a file. This keeps the sense of community growing, a benefit of BitTorrent.
Unlike LimeWire, most stand-alone BitTorrent clients are small in file size and fairly light on memory usage. Similar to LimeWire, a wide variety of file types can be found through BitTorrent.

References

• iTunes software overview
• Rhapsody
• Napster

Resources

• FrostWire: P2P file sharing
• uTorrent: BitTorrent client
• Torrentz Search Engine