Come on, everybody loves a polka!

Who remembers how it used to be when Napster was the #1 (and only one) file swapping service out there? Umm... not saying that I engaged in illegal downloading of music files (umm... that would be bad), but I have heard that it was quite the wild, wild west. Imagine having a music collection as big as the internet itself. Nowadays we have MSN Music, Itunes, Rhapsody and a host of other services on the web allowing you to legally share and purchase all the music you desire. Yes sir, illegal file swapping is done, finish, kaput! (Yeah, right!)

There are services out there that allow free file sharing like Bit Torrent and Kazaa, but it seems companies like that are always in the news for violations of one sort or another. What is an anti-capitalist anachist to do? Well, probably the same thing hackers have been doing on the down-low since Napster went under the legal gun. I call it, the poor man's peer-to-peer system.

I found this link while skimming through some blogs on the MSN Spaces network. Ironicly, it is a post entitled, "google advanced search technique" and it demonstrates with search strings how to find free music (among other things) by skimming the indexes of web users everywhere. Here is a sample string (go ahead and click it):

-inurl:htm -inurl:html -inurl:php -inurl:asp intitle:"index of" (mp3wma)

At this writing I get more random samples of music than I care to review. Hmm... What if I could limit the results down to a particular artist like... Lawrence Welk! (And why not? Everybody loves a polka!) So I add in Lawrence Welk using the equal sign between his name rather than using double quotes (like this "Lawrence Welk") because it seems to work better. Or maybe that's just me. Anyways, here is my new and improved search string.

-inurl:htm -inurl:html -inurl:php -inurl:asp intitle:"index of" (mp3wma) lawrence=welk

Not many results for Lawrence Welk out there, but I did have luck with the very first search result. By clicking the link Index of /bgm and scrolling through the results, I find the classic tune Lawrence Welk - Yellow Bird.wma.

What else is there to say but, "Rock on!"

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