Audiogalaxy was a file sharing system that indexed MP3 files. The system was created in 1998 by Michael Merhej as an FTP site index called The Borg Search, and evolved into a robust peer-to-peer system with client software (the Audiogalaxy "Satellite"), a web-based search engine, always-on searching for requested files, auto-resume and low system impact. It quickly gained ground among file sharers abandoning Napster in 2001. Some observing the previous downfall of Napster via lawsuit were shocked at the design of Audiogalaxy, which was in some ways more centralized than Napster. In June 2002, Audiogalaxy ended its peer-to-peer operations.

Overview

Audiogalaxy's stated mission was to facilitate sharing of music, though much more appears to have grown from its legacy. It was notable for its strong community due to such features as chat-enabled groups and per-artist internet forums. This strong community also facilitated a very broad reach of content across many genres, particular those that tend to remain under-developed in more modern systems. Although music is no longer shared, some message boards are still moderately active.

On September 8, 2002, Audiogalaxy licensed and re-branded a for-pay streaming service called Rhapsody from Listen.com and discontinued its famous web-based P2P service.

Conflict with RIAA over sharing of copyrighted material

In May 2001, Audiogalaxy implemented "groups" which allowed group members to send songs to everyone in the group. Hackers used this backdoor to circumvent the "blocked songs" restriction, where Audiogalaxy could deny transfer of specific copyrighted songs.

On May 9, 2002, Audiogalaxy required songs to be in the sender's shared folder to be sent. Previously, one could send any song to anyone by editing the CGI parameters. This protection was quickly defeated by creating a "dummy" file in one's shared folder, and sending a song with the same name. This was due to Audiogalaxy's checksum hashing, the correct file was always sent despite the dummy. Some of the users could bypass this setting too, but instead of CGI editing there was a less sophisticated solution. A simple .bat file in sharing folder (with a line "move *.mp3 x:\something\" for example) was scheduled at desired time moving all of the MP3 files into desired folder.

Even though Audiogalaxy claimed that they were trying to cooperate with the music industry and block copyrighted songs from their network, many of the network's users continued to share unauthorized copyrighted music files, causing Audiogalaxy to face a lawsuit by the RIAA on May 24, 2002. On this day, Audiogalaxy blocked sending of all blocked songs. A month later on June 17, 2002, Audiogalaxy reached an out-of-court settlement with the RIAA. The settlement reached would allow Audiogalaxy to operate a "filter-in" system, which required that for any music available, the songwriter, music publisher, and/or recording company must first consent to the use and sharing of the work. Finally, on September 8, 2002, Audiogalaxy licensed and re-branded a for-pay streaming service called Rhapsody from Listen.com and discontinued its famous web-based P2P service.

On December 25, 2002, Martin Rieder wrote a preliminary form of a database-backed backwards-compatible Audiogalaxy server, dubbed Server.

In the news

In June 2008, CNET hailed Audiogalaxy as one of the greatest defunct websites in history.